In his sermon, 'Elders: What Must They Be? (Pt 1)', Peter Allison explores the biblical qualifications for elders as outlined in 1 Timothy 3, emphasizing the importance of character over academic or charismatic qualities. The sermon underscores the significance of being blameless, not sinless, for elders, focusing on how they should embody the fruit of the Spirit. Allison addresses the cultural challenges and misconceptions regarding masculinity and leadership within the church, particularly for women evaluating male elders. He highlights the necessity of a disinterested, informed, and compelling desire for the office of an elder, rooted in a desire to serve rather than to gain power. The sermon concludes with practical steps for maintaining a blameless character, such as dealing with sin earnestly, keeping short accounts, immersing oneself in the word of God, and ensuring consistency between private and public life.

Our Scripture reading this morning is from 1 Timothy chapter 3. We've been looking here in a little mini-series on this office of elder, and we've looked at here where they come from and who they are. And this morning we'd like to begin looking at what they must be. So, 1st Timothy 3, beginning at verse 1. This is a faithful saying, if a man desires the position of a bishop, he desires a good work.

A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, temperate, sober-minded, of good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous, one who rules his own house well, having his children in submission with all reverence. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the Church of God? Not a novice, lest being puffed up with pride, he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. Moreover, he must have a good testimony among those who are outside, lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil." Major, open our eyes that we may see wondrous things out of His law. Father, please Make Your Word a swift word, passing from our ears and our minds to our hearts.

Seal Your Word to our hearts. Open them that they might receive it with meekness and obedience. And I ask that you would sanctify my sinful lips this morning, that they may proclaim your truth by the power of your Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen.

CNN recently interviewed Doug Wilson CNN recently interviewed Doug Wilson in what was intended to be a hit piece on Christians who desire to see God's Word honored and heeded in our nation. And at one point the interviewer who was a lady, and they were showing on the screen all the pictures of the elders from the church webpage. At one point, the interviewer noting that all the elders in their church were men, asked, well, do you accept women leadership in the church and in government? And she thought, I think, that she had him trapped. But he confidently and quickly said, no, not in the church.

To which she immediately responded with, why? With no little shock at such a simple and straightforward answer. And Doug immediately responded with, Because the Bible says no. And at that point the broadcast immediately shifts to a female pastor saying, well, that's not what happens in the Bible. Women do lead all the time.

We are this morning in the heart of a passage that many women in our culture and in our churches, even reformed churches, find troubling, if not downright offensive. It's certainly counter to our culture. Paul has just finished writing in chapter 2 about women being silent in church and not exercising authority over men. And now he comes to this topic of the qualification for elders who must be men. And so if you're a woman this morning, you may be tempted to consider this passage as one that really doesn't have much in it for you.

It's for the men. But I would suggest to you that there's nothing more vital for your church than having qualified overseers leading it. These are the ones whose example we are to follow as they are following Christ. These are the ones who are caring for our souls, who are to be feeding us from the Word of God. These are the ones who are caring for the souls of our loved ones, of our family.

And you see, as women, you are sensitive to things that your menfolk may be less in tune to. And your senses and your perceptions of elders, or of candidates for elders, are very important, and they should be taken into account. But your perceptions should be shaped by the scriptural qualifications. What God says an elder must be. What God says is the right view of men and their character.

And Your idea of the ideal qualification should not be shaped by the culture's idea of masculinity, whatever that might be. And there really are two dangers here for women in that regard. And one is to bring the culture's feminized view of the ideal man to your evaluation of elders. On the one hand, to bring the cultures feminized ideal of what a man should be. Or adopting that idea, or accepting it.

And on the other hand, there is an equal danger of adopting and accepting as normal a warped view of masculinity. What might rightly be called toxic masculinity. Neither are good. And both are harmful to you. One indication of the feminized or effeminate evaluation of male character is that twice as many boys in our culture are diagnosed and medicated, both diagnosed and medicated, with behavior disorders, or particularly what they call ADHD.

And there's a long history of that, but it's an entirely made up thing. There is no medical basis for it. And there are medical doctors that will tell you that. You don't have to take my word for it. But Twice as many boys as girls are diagnosed with this.

One indication of the latter type of misguided women accepting toxic masculinity is the huge female following that the Tate brothers have on social media. And if you don't know who they are, you don't need to worry about it. But if you do know who they are, you know what I'm talking about. They have a very warped and toxic, what I'll call definitely toxic view of masculinity, but it projects strength. And there are many women that are wrongfully attracted to it as a man because they've probably been so exposed to the other side.

We want, rather than either of these two errors, we want our view of godly, masculine character to be defined and shaped by the standard of the Word of God and what the Scripture says. What God says should be the character of a godly man. And so I trust this morning that this portion of God's Word is not only important to you as a woman, but that it feeds you today as well. That this is God's Word to you as men and also as women and as boys and girls. And so the statement then that Paul makes in the beginning of this chapter about what elders must be pertains to desire and its connection to church office.

It's an interesting statement at first glance because the Gospels record on several occasions where Jesus had to correct His disciples over their desire for position and for power. And one of those occasions arose when a mother of two of his disciples asked for her sons to be seated in positions of honor and power next to Jesus. And Jesus instructed them that greatness in the kingdom of God is found in humility and sacrificial service. And Jesus condemned the desire to lord it over other people. To lord it over other people means to gain power over other people, to subjugate or to dominate them.

Jesus said the Gentile rulers do that. That's their goal, to have power, To gain power and to hold on to power. To have power over other people. But he said, we're not to be that way. And so Paul, opening this chapter with a statement about the rightness of this desire might at first glance seem somewhat opposite to what Jesus has said elsewhere, and Paul also has said elsewhere.

But he says that if A man desires the position of a bishop or overseer. And those two words are the same. Some of your translations may use the word bishop. I think most of the newer translations are consistent with the use of overseer. But they're entirely synonymous.

One comes from a transliteration of the Hebrew word for overseer, and the other is a translation of that word. So bishop and overseer, same thing. I'll use them somewhat interchangeably. So Paul opens this chapter saying that if a man desires the position of an overseer, he desires good work. And now an overseer is obviously somebody who exercises oversight.

It's someone who exercises authority of some sort. And so Paul states that someone who desires this position, this office, desires a good work. Now of course, we know there's no contradiction ever in the Word of God. So notice carefully what Paul calls good here. He doesn't say the desire, with the emphasis on desire, he doesn't say the desire for office is good.

No, he doesn't condemn desire either. It's the work itself that he calls good or noble. He says that those who desire the office desire a good work, a noble work. The work of oversight that he calls a good or noble work is the work of a servant. This desire for this work is not a desire to rule over others.

It's a desire for the work of a servant. Now, he uses the word desire twice in this short sentence, and there are actually two different Greek words that are being translated here. And it's worth taking a minute to explain the difference. The first word where it says, if a man desires, that means to reach for it, to grab, to stretch out, to try to attain something. Literally, it means to reach out.

Figuratively, it would mean to seek to accomplish something, to seek to accomplish a specific goal, to strive for it. And this is the sense that this word has in Hebrews 11, 16, where it speaks of saints who died without receiving the promise, but now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Or in 1 Timothy 6, in that well-known passage where Paul says, we're reaching for wealth, we're striving for it, is translated greediness. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from their faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. And they're reaching for wealth, and they're grasping for it.

And what they're doing to gain wealth, they've pierced themselves through with many sorrows. So the first word is a grasping, it's a reaching for something. The second word pertains more closely to having a strong desire to do something or to secure something or obtain something. It speaks of the longing. It's probably more closely connected with what we think of as desire.

This is the same word for lust and for covet. So it refers to the longings of one's heart. See, desires themselves can arise from good motives, or desires can arise from evil motives. And where they arise from evil motives, we call that covetousness or lust. Where they arise from good desires, we usually consider that good desire.

Or we use the word desire. And so Paul is not saying here that the desire itself for office is good. He is saying that where they have that desire, they are desiring a good work, a noble work. There are many who desire an office wrongly. Whose desire for office is a wrong desire, a sinful desire.

You know, that's what greediness is. Greediness is a wrong desire for a good gift of God. Money is something God gives. It's His good gift. It's a blessing.

He gives it to those He is blessing. He gives it to others as well. But we can have a desire for that good gift that is an evil desire motivated out of our own desire for wealth, wrong desire. And in Philippians 1, the passage that we had in our confession, Paul speaks of some that preach Christ from envy and strife. They are doing a good work, but they're doing it out of the wrong motive.

He says that they preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely. Selfish ambition is a wrong desire. Selfish ambition is, the word is actually electioneering. Electioneering is self-promotion. It's saying, vote for me, I'm this great guy.

And the Bible condemns that very strongly. Think about that. Selfish ambition. Electioneering. It's self-promotion seeking power over others.

And Paul says Some people have a desire, they're preaching out of that desire. That's an evil desire. Even though what they are doing may be good in itself. So a good and right desire for this office is first of all, it's a disinterested desire. It's not born of selfish ambition, a desire to promote ourselves or to gain power over others, but it's a desire for seeing Christ's Kingdom advanced.

It's a desire for seeing Christ's people blessed and edified and nourished and equipped and strengthened. When the desire is for those things, not a selfish one, then that's a desire born of right modus. It should also be an informed desire. It shouldn't be a desire that arises from a romanticized view of the ministry as a pure study of doctrine in an ivory tower or something. But it should be a desire that's informed by the realities of a Gospel ministry.

A desire that encompasses the realities of shepherds and of the sacrifices that are necessary to those who are doing that work, the personal sacrifices that are attendant to the work of a shepherd. And it should be a compelling desire. A desire that grows and displaces other competing desires. So a couple observations about this office. If a man desires the position of a bishop is what the New King James has.

And many other translations say something similar, position of an overseer. And I would just note two things in passing, not a big deal, but I think worth mentioning. First of all, there is no definite article in the Greek, the the position. And secondly, there is no phrase of a bishop or of an overseer. What it says most simply is, If a man desires an office.

Now clearly Paul is talking about the office of bishop, but because he says so in the very next verse. But this word is also used in Acts 1, the exact same word, of an apostle. And they didn't put the of a bishop on the end of that. They just said an office. And so I think this word is in verse 1 there, for man desires an office should not be restricted to just that of an elder.

But rather, Paul I think is speaking here of both the office of elder and deacon, because he says down in verse 8, likewise, deacons, in the same way. And so the work of a deacon is also a noble work. And those who desire that work also desire a noble work. And so, if a man desires an office then, he desires a noble work. And that's referring in this first verse to both of these offices that he's going to talk about.

He says also that this is a faithful statement. A faithful statement is something that's worthy of acceptance. It's worthy of being trusted. Authority is not a necessary evil, but the right use of authority is a good work. Paul is saying that statement is worthy of being trusted in.

It's worthy of being accepted. A shepherd, you see, is not a glamorous work in the eyes of the world. Shepherds, you remember, were not looked up to by the Egyptians. It's really the fruit of a Christian culture that would put any honor on the work of a pastor. And when the church falls into disrepute and pastors and shepherds are in it for personal gain and selfish ambition as in the days of Rome, then church shepherds become despised on par with con artists and all the occupations that go with it.

But you see, Paul is saying, regardless of how the culture may view this work, it's a noble work. I'd also point out that there is no such thing as an overseer that's unattached to a congregation, any more than there can be a husband without a wife, or a father without a son, or a mother without a daughter. These terms necessitate, the idea of an overseer necessitates a relationship to a specific congregation. And that's why people are not just ordained at large to nothing. But they're not ordained apart from a call to a specific congregation.

That call, that office must always be paired with a specific congregation. And so this desire then for this office must be a desire for a particular body that's motivated by a love of particular people. And so we now come to a list in verse 2 that begins through verse 7 of about 17 qualifications. It's a lengthy list for the Office of Elder. There are no academic qualifications listed here.

There is one in Titus. But here there are none. There are no requirements for seminary degrees or advanced linguistic knowledge. These qualifications pertain to character. It's not about vision casting or organizational abilities or charisma or a vibrant personality or mass appeal.

None of those characteristics are mentioned either. These are the qualifications of a man of God who has been filled with the Spirit of God, the fruit of the Spirit. Secondly, I would point out that These characteristics are mandatory. These qualifications are mandatory requirements. And overseer says must be.

They're not suggestions. They're requirements. They're must haves. They are must haves for elders, but they are characteristics, they are qualifications that all men ought to aspire to. That all Christian men ought to have.

And so that's another reason why this passage should be very relevant to all of us this morning, because these are qualifications that should describe all of us. But they are mandatory. Christ is the King of His church. And He is saying this is what those who would represent Me must be if they are to care for My people. So the first one then is an overseer must be blameless.

Blameless. Now that does not mean sinless. Obviously, there is no man that is without sin other than Christ. But some may recognize that while this is not saying sinless, they may inwardly still cling to the idea that this means sinless. And you can tell that kind of person, not because they say that, but because they often will never stay in a church very long.

The idea of an elder is fine from a distance. But once they come close, once they have been any length of time in a congregation, and they begin to truly get to know the men, the elders there, they become disillusioned with the leadership. Because they find some sin. They see some sin in the elders or in one of the elders. And they use that to disqualify them and become disillusioned with that leadership and move to another church where they are enamored from a distance with those elders.

And they profess that they can submit to them, but once they get to know them, then they become disillusioned again because they see some sin, and they're probably right in seeing those sins. And so then they move on to another church and they move from church to church, Always professing to be in submission to the elders, but never being able to actually be in submission to any particular elders that might have sins. And I think Part of the problem is this unbiblical idea that blameless means without sin. You really don't know people until you know what their weaknesses are. If you don't know what somebody's weaknesses are, You don't know them.

If you haven't seen them sin, if you haven't seen them fail, if you can't say some weakness that they have, then you don't really know them. And you don't really love people until you can love them in spite of their weaknesses. It's easier to love people that have no sins. It's easier to love people that have loved us. But when people fail us, when they sin against us, now loving them is a very different matter.

But that's what actual biblical love is. It's being able to love people as sinners, because we recognize that we are no better than they are. And that's the basis of forgiveness as well. Now Some people can go to the other extreme and not consider anyone disqualified. As long as our intentions are good, as long as they meant well, as long as they said they were sorry, then they can be forgiven and continue their work.

And there are lots of examples of that today where church leaders can fall into scandalous sins. And some are ready to accept them right back the next day and move on as if Nothing had happened. And that's not right either. There is a standard here. It's not sinless.

But what it means is that no one can bring a charge that would stick. There is nothing which an adversary could take hold of, on which a charge might be justly grounded. There is nothing that would bring reproach or scandal on the name of Christ. It means to be above reproach. And so reproach is to censure.

It's to blame. It's disgrace. So reproach is a disgrace. So this is saying, an elder must be blameless. There must be nothing in his life that would bring a scandal to the name of Christ.

The sins in His life should be the sins that are common to men, common to others. We don't tend to usually accuse other people of the sins that we see in ourselves. And so where pastors are not above reproach, it brings dishonor on Christ Himself. And these men are His under-shepherds. They are speaking in His name.

And what they do is either a faithful reflection of Christ, or it's a wrong and distorted reflection of Christ. And this is true of all Christians, but it's especially true of those who would be elders, those who are elders. Our witness to the world is compromised when we as Christians are not above reproach. But the witness of the church itself is compromised by the conduct of shepherds that are not above reproach. You know, just this week I saw there was a PCA pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, arrested for solicitation of prostitution.

That's sad for anyone. It's especially grievous for Christians. But it's ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more damaging when it's one of Christ's own under-shepherds. We could say that this qualification of being above reproach, of being blameless, is a summary of all the other 16 qualifications that follow. What does it mean to be without reproach?

What does it mean to be the husband of one wife. It means to be temperate. It means sober-minded. It means good behavior. It means somebody who is hospitable and so on.

We see several examples in the Scriptures of men who are said to be blameless. Blameless. Above reproach, but not sinless. Samuel is an example. The prophet Samuel began his service of the Lord at three years of age, and he's now an old man.

Many, many decades he has been judging Israel, making a circuit, visiting each city throughout the whole nation of Israel, and then coming back to his hometown. And in every case that he heard, he had to make a ruling in favor of one party and against another party. That means there were a number of people who might have had a sinful desire to find something that he could be charged with, people that he had ruled against. But we read in 1 Samuel 12 that He says, and now here is the king walking before you. I am old and grey-headed, and I have walked before you from my childhood to this day.

Here I am, witness against me before the Lord and before His anointed. Whose ox have I taken? Whose donkey have I taken? Or whom have I cheated? Whom have I oppressed?

Or from whose hand have I received any bribe with which to blind my eyes. I will restore it to you." See, Samuel had been rejected, or felt rejected, because they wanted a king. And so there's a little bit of justification here, self-justification, in not a totally wrong way, that there is nothing in him that was blameworthy. And these people answered and said, you have not cheated us or oppressed us, nor have you taken anything from any man's hand. Samuel wasn't sinless.

His sons were wicked, and That was a sin on his part. But he was blameless in this, that he had acted above reproach in all of his judgments and public dealings with the people. And they were all able to say that to him. Even being half the people there that he would have had to rule against. Or Daniel.

Daniel had an animus against him. He was always being the one promoted. He was the one who outshined everybody else. He was wiser and smarter. And so they had an animus against him.

They wanted to bring him down. But they couldn't find anything in his conduct. Though they looked, though they searched, they were looking high and low, but they couldn't find anything in His conduct. Though they looked, though they searched, they were looking high and low, but they couldn't find anything in His conduct that would be a chargeable offense. They couldn't even find an error.

And so They had to make up a law specifically against his prayer life. Daniel 6 says, They tried to find some charge against Daniel concerning the kingdom, but they could find no charge or fault because he was faithful. He was blameless. Nor was there any error or fault found in him. And these men said, these are men looking for a fault, and they said, we shall not find any charge against this Daniel unless we find it against him concerning his law of God." So you know the story there.

But there is a man, not sinless, but blameless. Or the Apostle Paul, during the Apostle Paul's trials, And we've just been looking at all that in our study through Acts. His opponents brought serious charges, but you remember in each case they could not prove them. They couldn't bring charges that would stick. They weren't even able to prove their charges to a non-Christian Roman ruler who had no particular favoritism to Christianity.

See, because Paul was blameless. Not sinless, but blameless. He was put in prison. Some might say, well, that's a scandal. You got the pastors in prison.

The Apostle, the Christian evangelist is in prison, but he was in there falsely. He was falsely accused. He was never convicted. And ultimately, he was released. And that's why we saw that Paul was so careful to defend his name when he got to Rome to ensure that his imprisonment and his circumstances were rightly understood.

And so I would close with four points. How does one stay blameless? The first would be we need to be serious about dealing with sin in our lives. We need to crucify it. Scandals happen when sin is ignored, when it's persisted in, when it's continued in, and in time it blows up, becomes known.

We need to be those who are sensitive to sin, who are examining ourselves as to whether we are in the faith. We need to be those who, as we see this sin, as we're sensitive to our own sin in our lives, that we confess it, that we agree with God, that we agree about what God says about what we do and what we think. When we really agree with God, it means we see it the way God sees it, and not the way our sinful mind wants to see it. That we feel about it the same way that God feels about it. We hate it.

And when we don't hate our sin, that should be a concern for us. Then we're not dealing with sin in our life. We should hate it. God hates it. We should hate it when we see it in ourselves first.

And we need to confess it. That's how we are healed. Secondly, we need to keep short accounts with others. We need to ask forgiveness appropriately, And I would refer you to the seven A's of confession that Ken Sandy lays out in his book. If you haven't read that recently, I recommend that.

There's a right and there's a wrong way to ask forgiveness, to confess our sin when we sinned against others. There are ways that can minimize it. But what he deals with is how to do it properly. How to acknowledge the hurt that we've caused. How to accept responsibility for what our sin has done.

How to ask forgiveness, specifically, for that sin. And so forth. To keep a short account means that we make restitution where we have sinned, where we have harmed somebody. Thirdly, to be blameless, to continue blameless, we have to be in the Word. The Bible says, It's Your Word that I have hid in my heart that I might not sin against You.

If we're going to be blameless, we need the Word of God hidden in our heart. And all that that entails, reading the Word, studying the Word, internalizing it, meditating upon it, hearing the Word, as well as committing it to mind. In the Word, it's your Word, it's the Word of God in our heart that will keep us from sin. And fourthly, to take heed to ourselves. That him who thinks he stands, take heed.

To take heed to ourselves is to ask, does our private life match our public teaching, in the case of an elder, or our public image? Is what we present to others what we are? Or are we projecting something that is not faithful, representative of what we really are? We need to be those who are honest, who have an open book with one another. That is the way that we maintain being blameless.

Are we practicing what we're preaching? Are we practicing what we say that we believe? You see, where there's disconnects here, that will put us on the path to bringing reproach on the name of Christ. So no one, none of us, certainly not elders, are sufficient in all of these things. We're not sufficient in our own strength to be blameless.

We recognize a deep sense of our own weakness and our own inability. And our sufficiency needs to be in Christ, as elders, but also as men and as Christians. Our sufficiency has to be in Christ. Who is sufficient for these things? None of us.

But God's grace is sufficient for us. So it takes the power of God to meet and to sustain this qualification for an elder just as much as anybody else. And so I close by charging you to pray. Pray especially for your elders that they would be faithful in these matters. That they would be faithful particularly in dealing with sins in their lives, in keeping short accounts with others, in being in the Word, in taking heed to themselves.

And you can pray for that for others as well, but especially for your elders, for your own sake, for your own souls, are dependent upon them. And upon them bringing the Word of God to you. And so it takes the power of God to do this. So pray for the power of God to rest upon them. Pray for His grace to be sufficient and made perfect in their weakness.

May it be so. Almighty Father in Heaven, we thank You that through You we can do all things through Your strength. That what is impossible for us is possible for you. We pray, Lord, that we might humbly cling to Your grace. Cling to You.

We pray that Your power might rest upon us. That we may walk before You blamelessly, as You call us to do. We ask that you might raise up the prayers of your people for one another and for the elders that you have called and commissioned. We ask, Lord, that You would give us all a humility one to another, a submission one to another, that You might not resist us, but that we might have Your grace. For You give grace to the humble, but You resist those who are proud.

You know them from afar, but to those who are humble, You know from near. You draw near to. Lord, we want to walk near to You. We want to know Your grace and not Your resistance. We ask this through Jesus Christ.

Amen.