Do Pastors Children Have to be Believers?

Andrew Rappaport's Rapp Report

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One, two, three. Welcome to the Wrap Report with your host, Andrew Rapoport, where we provide biblical interpretation and application.

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01:48

All right, well, welcome to another Wrap Report. We're glad to have you with us.

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And this is an episode that several of you have asked me to address this issue. And so we are going to do that right now.

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Today's topic is going to be covering a text in the book of Titus. And this is dealing with the issue that we have of the qualifications of pastors.

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And today's topic is going to be very specific. Let me read the text to us. I'm going to start in verse 5.

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I'll read this passage, and then let's get into the question of in Titus 1, verse 6, when it says,

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Children are believers. Does a pastor have to have children that are believers in Jesus Christ?

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I don't know if I introduced myself. I'm Andrew Rapoport, your host of the Wrap Report. Sorry, been doing a bunch of recording on other people's podcasts, so I may be just a little bit dazzled from that.

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But let's dig into this passage. This is what God's Word says in Titus 1, verse 5. This is why

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I left you in Crete, so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

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If anyone is above approach, the husband and one wife and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

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For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach.

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He must not be arrogant, quick -tempered, or drunkard, or violent, or greedy for gain, but hospitable, a lover of good, self -controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined.

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He must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he might be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict.

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So, with this, there are 16 qualifications mentioned here for a pastor.

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And if you want, we have available, I'll put in the show notes, a link to the quick reference card that we have at Striving for Eternity.

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If you'd like to get that, you could just go to the Striving for Eternity store. We have these quick reference cards that are helpful for people to be able to retain different things, one on the attributes of God, one on really a way of handling conflict, and one on the qualifications of both pastors and deacons.

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And so I will put the card for the qualifications of church leaders in the show notes.

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Now, we want to deal with this because there is some dispute, and I've had half a dozen people ask me to address this topic.

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And so I want to address this. The issue that some people have is it says, speaking of the pastor, that he's above reproach, the husband one wife, and that his children are believers.

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Now, at some point I should address the husband of one wife, but we weren't asked as much about that one.

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Husband one wife means a one -woman man. I don't believe it means that he can't be divorced.

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I don't believe that it's speaking of divorce and remarriage. By the way, if it's speaking of divorce, a man can be divorced, never remarry, and many people who say that this is dealing with divorce would say he's still not qualified.

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Well, if you only had one woman for life, that's how they read it, what you're excluding is the widower.

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The widower who remarries wouldn't be qualified then, if you hold that view. But a divorced man who never remarries would have to be qualified by that view.

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So you have to look at that text. Real briefly, I believe it has to do with whether he's looking at other women or whether he has an eye only for his one wife.

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And that is the thing that I think that makes the difference there.

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And so I think what we have to do when we do this is we have to look at this and say, is this a one -woman man or is it the husband of only one wife for life?

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Again, you can have a divorced person who never remarries and he's only got one wife for life, a widower, none of us would say that it's wrong for a widower to remarry, and therefore that would exclude the widower who remarries.

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So you want to think through issues like that. But today's topic is going to be with the very next part that says, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination.

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Now, the question that you have here is, what does this mean? Does this mean that the pastor, in order to be qualified to be a pastor, you have to have children who are believers in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, that they must be followers of Christ, that they must be repentant.

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Now, what do you do if the children are out of the house? What do you do if they're too young?

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Should we tell a man that he's not qualified until his children are old enough that we see whether they're believers?

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These are things that come into play, but let us start off first with looking at not only the text, but let's first look at the word itself.

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Now, let me start by giving the way there's two views. This term can be used.

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People either see this as that the children are believers in Christ or that the children are faithful.

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Now, the word in Greek, pistos, can mean either.

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The term actually means, let me read to you from the Lexham Theological Workbook, says this, that it is trustworthy, faithful, trusting, believing, describes a person or thing as characterized by trustworthiness or belief.

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So you see that it could be used in either way, and all of the Greek workbooks are going to tell you the same thing, that this could be either one.

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Now, as we look at this, there's two ways that you'll see this handled. You will see men, and men

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I agree with, by the way, on many areas, such as John MacArthur. Now, John MacArthur, I think, may have changed his view on this, because many years ago, back in the 80s, 90s, when

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I was listening to him preach on the qualifications of a pastor, he came to this passage and said that it referred to the children being faithful.

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But in his latest commentary on the passage, and his latest preaching on it, he has said that the children must be believers in Christ.

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Now, for the record, as far as my understanding, Grace Community Church, where John MacArthur is the pastor, does have other pastors who do not have believing children, as adult children.

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And therefore, I would see that they are saying that they believe this to be, but I think that they may not hold it so strongly, because it is a challengeable thing, and I think that they probably just do not hold to this as something as an absolute, and therefore disqualify people whose children are non -believers.

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But the way that some will approach this, that believe that this passage is speaking of believers, they will look at the way pistos is used everywhere else in the

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Bible, and they will argue that everywhere else that this word is used, this word is used when speaking of people, it speaks of believers.

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Now, pistos, as a Greek word, is not required to speak of believers when speaking of people.

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It may be used that way everywhere else in the scripture, but this is a hermeneutical principle we must understand, that first off, you never interpret a passage, and specifically a word in a passage, by the way the word is used everywhere else in scripture.

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You always start with the way the word is used in the immediate context and then branch out.

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It is always the immediate context that defines the word. So when

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MacArthur or others are going to take this word, and they're going to look at how it's used everywhere else in the

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Bible, and say, well, when it speaks of men in the Bible, it always refers to believers in Christ, therefore this must be referring to believers in Christ, because they're people.

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Well, let us first start with that and see if that holds true. Well, when applied to a person, very often

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I saw that it was referring to believers, except for one passage.

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Now, the word pistos wasn't used, but the same root word is used in 2

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Timothy 2 .13. If we are faithless and remain faithful, he cannot deny himself.

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So there he's contrasting the faithless. Well, that's used in a negative way.

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That's used as someone who wouldn't be a believer. And so by looking at that alone,

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I would say that, granted that's not the same word, but it is the same root word that we would have.

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And I think then what we end up having to do is examine this to say, okay, is this something that people are reading into the passage, or is it something that we end up having as an absolute?

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Well, I think that this is talking in a negative way of people, and so it could be referring to unsaved people who are faithless.

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They don't remain faithful. They cannot deny himself.

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And so the idea here that I would end up seeing is that the root word, at least, can refer in Scripture to unbelievers.

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But again, one thing you always have to remember with this, the word is used as faithful when speaking of objects.

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And most of the time that I saw, when we looked through, and I looked through all 65 passages that I found that fit with this word.

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And when I did that, I categorized them and found that, yes, most of them would definitely be referring to a believing person in Christ, and some could be referring to a faithful person that happens to be a believer in Christ.

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You see, that becomes a dilemma. When you make the argument that it is only referring to believers, what that means then is that this word has to explicitly be talking about their belief in Christ, not their trustworthiness or faithfulness.

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That's the thing. Many of the passages refer to a believer who is faithful.

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Now, is he faithful because he's a believer? Well, yes, that's true. However, is it referring to his belief or his faithfulness and trustworthiness?

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See, that is the dilemma, because a lot of times what I saw in the Scripture is that there's passages that it's applied to someone who is faithful, and yes, he happens to also be a believer.

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So the question that we have to ask is to look at the immediate context.

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There's some things we can see in the context here that should help us. So one thing we don't want to do, as I said, is go to a way this is used everywhere else.

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Now, the argument that is made against this would be that if you look at the immediate context, you have to look at the way the word is used elsewhere.

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If it's everywhere else, it's used to refer to a believer, and you're saying this time it's referring to trustworthiness, the argument says that this then is an exception.

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And being an exception, there is an issue, because you have an exception the way it's used everywhere else.

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Well, let me be clear, either way, no matter what, you have an exception. Why? Because every one of the 16 characteristics mentioned here have to do...

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We'll mention 15 out of 16. We'll exclude this one for now. All 15 deal with the character of the man.

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Now, I mentioned husband of one wife. There, people will say that this has to do with being divorced, that it's a one woman for life.

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Now, you don't see the word life in there anywhere. Husband of one wife is this dealing with polygamy.

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Just reading this, it could fit that he's saying you shouldn't be polygamous. Historically, polygamy wasn't an issue back then.

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Is this really dealing with divorce? Well, divorce wasn't really an issue back then, so it's strange that he would bring up an issue that wouldn't be a big thing for many, many years.

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But having a straying eye, yeah, that is an issue. And as I already mentioned, the people that want to argue that this is disqualifying people for divorce, a man who's divorced and never remarries fits into one woman for life.

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But a person whose wife dies and remarries does not qualify for one woman for life.

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And so would God be saying... I mean, think about this. God doesn't say there's anything wrong with a widower remarrying.

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So is that disqualifying someone? Now, I would argue that the divorce, if someone's divorced, it could disqualify them, but not under the husband of one wife, but the character issue of running his household.

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I believe that that second qualification, husband of one wife, is dealing with having a straying eye, whether he's looking at other women.

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And this is something that you end up seeing as a character issue. Now, if you want to exclude that one as well, just for argument's sake, okay, now we're down to 14 of them that all have to do with character issues.

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I would argue that this is the character of the man that qualifies the man.

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But if you're saying that the children must be believers, then it's the character of the children that affect the man.

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Now, if you believe in the sovereignty of God, then you could argue very easily that God knows who he qualifies for ministry, and if he's going to qualify a man for ministry, he is therefore going to bring his children to salvation.

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That is very logical and makes sense in the case of saying that if you're going to argue that God's sovereign, he can save who he wants to save, and therefore he will save the children of a man who is going to be qualified for ministry.

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But how do we know that they're saved? How do you and I know that your pastor's children are saved?

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Well, we wouldn't. I mean, we would look at when they grow up, move out of the house, and start living a

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Christian life on their own. Then we know that they weren't just hypocrites being raised in a Christian home.

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And so we end up seeing very quickly that the situation that we have, and I've just noticed in my notes that I'm off.

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I've counted the number three twice. We actually have 17 characteristics here. Sorry. But what we end up seeing in this is that you have these character issues of the man

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To make an argument that the children must be saved would require,

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I believe, for us as a congregation to know whether a man is qualified, we'd need to see adult children.

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We'd need to see children who've been tested by temptation, who've shown through time that they're not just living out their parents' faith, but they actually have their own faith.

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That takes adult children, really. So now you'd have to disqualify or say you don't know if someone's qualified.

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Well, the counter -argument to that is that you would accept the man as being qualified on the children's profession, and if the children stray, even as adults, then the man is now disqualified and must step down.

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This means that you would have a pastor who would have children. Well, children are clearly not believers.

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They're not born to be believers. So would the pastor then be disqualified until his children are old enough to make a profession of faith?

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Interesting dilemmas you have with that position. And I believe that none of those are really an issue.

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Why? Well, because the word that we have here is, though referring to humans sometimes, refers to them as being faithful.

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Look at Luke 16 .10 and 11. One who is faithful in very little is also faithful in much.

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And one who is dishonest in very little is dishonest in much. If then you have been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust you with true riches?

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And if you have been faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is your own?

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Now look at those three verses, Luke 16 .10, 11, 12, the word faithful is used, pistos used several times, and in every one of those it's being used in reference of being faithful, not a believer.

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Now, all I need is one verse, one time, that pistos is used for a human to refer to faithful to discredit or show that the argument that this is only used for believers is not true.

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And here's an example of it. We end up seeing

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Luke 19 .17, and he said to him, Well done, my good and faithful servant.

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Because you have been faithful in very little, you will show authority over ten cities.

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Now this is referring to a human that doesn't actually exist.

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This is a parable. So it can't be an actual believer. But this is someone who is faithful.

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So what we end up seeing is that Luke 16 and Luke 19, which are the times that this is used referring to a human being and not specifically a believer.

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There are times that it could be a believer or faithful. There's many passages that refer to that.

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But I bring these out because if there's one verse like this, then we cannot say that this term is always used to refer to believers.

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Therefore, I think the core argument that people have by saying that it would be an exception, well, it's not really an exception, because not only is this an exception, but so is

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Luke 16 and so is Luke 19. They would be exceptions as well.

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So I don't think the argument made can be valid. I think that this term, the word itself, means faithful or trustworthy.

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I think that we can see here that the term is not always used for believers only.

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It would be hard cry in my mind to use the term faithful to refer to a believer as a non -existent person, as in a parable.

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In other words, the person in the parable is not a believer in Jesus Christ because that person doesn't exist.

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It's an illustration. What was he illustrating? Faithfulness, trustworthiness.

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Now, if you say that the children must be believers, then what you're saying here is that a man is qualified on what someone else does.

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This would make an exception in its immediate context. The immediate context, these are character traits of the man.

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These are character traits of the person who's trying to be qualified as a pastor.

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And it says here that he has all 17 of these attributes. If he doesn't have them, then he's not qualified.

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But the qualifications are all based on his character, not someone else's behavior or, in fact, something they can't even control.

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God is the one who saves us. We also can't really tell if someone's a believer until, like I said, they're older.

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Now, there's a stronger argument that could be made against the argument that the children are believers in Jesus Christ.

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Because this passage, and I had sat under the preaching of a pastor who holds to the view that the children must be believers.

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And it was kind of disappointing because the arguments that he made was that the term believers everywhere means believers.

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I've already pointed out that's not true. The other argument that he made for it was that all of the commentaries that he looked at agreed with that position.

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Well, I don't know which commentaries he looked at. He didn't name them. And I also don't know how many he looked at.

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But I looked at three dozen commentaries. And more of them said faithful than they said believers.

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In fact, I went through about a dozen and a half journal articles that were in seminary journals, where you get more technical information because it's written specifically to seminarians, to pastors, to scholars.

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And so you're going to get more technical detail there. And most of them agreed that it is faithful.

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Now, what have I just done there? Well, I just took an argument that was made and gave counter -argument.

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But here's the problem I have with both the argument that was originally made by this pastor and my own.

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They're a logical fallacy. It's a fallacy of populum. It's a fallacy of population.

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So in other words, just because more people agree doesn't make it right.

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A majority of people in Germany agreed that it's okay to kill

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Jewish people. Does that make it right? No. The majority doesn't make right.

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It doesn't matter that he looked at who knows how many commentaries and they all agreed with him. It's an invalid argument.

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In fact, I was able to just make a counter -argument just as invalid with more support.

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Now, I gave the numbers of the commentaries. I looked at quite a number.

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I looked at quite a number of journal articles. I could list them all. But that would kind of be a waste of time for this discussion.

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Why? Because the argument itself is invalid. It's illogical. The conclusion is not based directly on the supporting arguments.

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Maybe he only chose commentaries that he knew would agree with him.

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And then I could choose commentaries that don't agree with him. Does that make his view wrong?

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No, it wouldn't. Because the commentaries are just other people's opinion. When we're going to interpret scripture, we do it from the text.

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So what are we doing here? We want to look at the text. One of the other arguments that was made for this case was that this pastor had looked at other translations of the

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Bible. His argument was that he looked at the NIV.

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The NIV is going to be a more liberal translation. And his argument thus was that the

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NIV says, whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.

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And so he said, see, the more liberal translation agrees with that.

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Now, why do I say it's a liberal? I'm saying it's liberal because if you're going to look at a

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New American Standard, you're going to get the most literal word -for -word reading. And that's going to read, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion.

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Okay. I read for you the ESV, which also uses the term belief.

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But as you go through the different translations, the argument he made was that the

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New International Version, which is a less literal translation, it is more of a sentence -by -sentence translation.

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So you're going to get more of an interpretation in there. Many people argue it's a more liberal translation.

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I don't think that's exactly fair in the sense of just saying that it's not word -for -word makes it more liberal, but it does make it less accurate to the original language.

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But I decided to look at other very good commentaries, some of the more conservative commentaries, such as the

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Holman Christian Standard Bible, which is so conservative that they were willing to translate the word tongues as languages to be clear, to translate slave as slave.

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They were going to be more faithful with that translation. And how did they translate it? Having faithful children not accused of wildness or rebellion.

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Then I decided to go to what I think is one of the even more conservative, and one of the good, better translations, is the

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NET Bible, New English Translation, which reads,

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And an elder must be blameless, the husband or one wife, with faithful children who cannot be charged with dissipation or rebellion.

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So what you end up seeing is the pastor's argument was, well, look at these, a liberal translation interprets it as believing, and therefore it must be believing.

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However, the more conservative ones that I see end up saying faithful.

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And what's the difference with those? They're a newer translation. And understanding the language a little bit in our culture, a little bit more than 95, which wasn't all that long ago, but that's being more literal of a translation.

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NIV was, I think the one that I read was the 85 edition. So you end up having these differences that you have with the way people are choosing the words.

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So is it fair to make the argument that just because the NIV says believe, it's somehow a liberal translation, they would be the worst case, and therefore it must be believers?

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Again, I'm going to say that what I just did, and what this pastor did, is a logical fallacy.

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Both of those arguments are invalid. What did

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I just do? The same thing I did before. I just found some other translations that support the argument for faithfulness, and I just declared they're more conservative.

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Therefore, the more conservative view is faithful. Now, I'm sure that the pastor that preached that message would disagree with me.

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But the problem is, the conclusion he made is not directly from the text.

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It's not directly from the argument being made. It's a conclusion without logical support because it's an argument from a population.

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It is a logical fallacy, and if you have a logical fallacy, it's invalid. So it is not right to interpret based on what the majority of translations say.

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Nor the majority of commentators. Now, I've already shown that the word believers in Scripture does not always refer to believers.

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And in fact, the root word can refer to an unbeliever in one case. What I'd like to do is look at the rest of this passage and the connection, and to make the case, because I think the context gives us the answer.

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Is this believers or is this faithful? And I'd like to do that right after this message.

32:48

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We're going to have information there for you shortly from the time we drop this. But we are putting together a conference.

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Justin Peters, a friend of mine, called me up several weeks ago during this quarantine and said, hey, how's your speaking schedule looking?

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And I went, it's clear. I mean, everything just wiped off. We've had no speaking events with this.

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Things have been canceled all the way out to August. People are just not sure. They don't want to run conferences and seminars with just the unknown of whether people would show up and whether they can afford to cover the costs.

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And so we have had cancellations. Justin told me he had the same thing. He and I both have started to do some, basically been able to literally train people around the world.

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Both he and I spoke in the Philippines. He was speaking in India. I've been speaking in Washington State. I think

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Justin was in Africa, spoke in Africa. All from our home. That's the advantage now with some of the technology, with everyone doing this stuff remotely.

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And we decided that we would put on a conference just like we did in the Philippines. So we're doing the

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Snatch Them From The Flames Home Edition. And we want to encourage you, May 30th, it's going to be all day on Saturday.

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It will be starting at 10 o 'clock Eastern Time. It will start with Justin Peters on a session on the sufficiency of Scripture.

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Then I will do a session on interpreting Scripture. We'll take a lunch break.

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After lunch, we're going to do two longer sessions where Justin will do a session on discerning false teachers.

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Then I will do a session on identifying false teachers from the book of Jude. And then we'll have a

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Q &A. So throughout the day, you can ask whatever questions, and we will take those questions and be answering them in the

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Q &A time. So I hope that you'll set aside May 30th for the Snatch Them From The Flames Home Edition.

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It is a seminar that Justin and I have put together, and we're going to be traveling to different churches when we're allowed to travel and be going around and be teaching these things.

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So if you're interested in a Snatch Them From The Flames seminar in your church, just reach out to us at strivingforeternity .org.

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It is one of the several seminars we have. We have seminars on Bible interpretation made easy. We have our evangelism seminar called

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Ambassador Evangelism. We have our Solid Apologetics seminar. We have our Creation Science seminar.

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These are weekend seminars. We come in on Friday and Saturday and teach to disciple people in knowing how to better handle

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God's Word and to better defend God's Word. So let us look at now the immediate context of Titus 1 .6

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to see is there something here that can help us because we're looking at the word pistos and we see that it doesn't always mean believers.

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It can mean faithful or trustworthy, and therefore we have this dilemma that it sure seems that it is not clear just yet because good arguments could be made either way.

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I think it is a valid argument to say that when we have trouble with a word, we don't know what a word means.

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We look at the immediate context. Then we look at the context of how that word is used in that book.

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Then we want to look at how that word is used by that author. Then we want to look at how that book is used in the

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Testament. In other words, is it New Testament or Old Testament because what you're going to have is Greek versus the

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Hebrew, but you can look at Hebrew words and look at how they were translated in the

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Septuagint, which is a Greek translation of the Old Testament, and we can look at the word's usage there.

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So sometimes we could do that. And so this is the way we go about trying to understand a word that we're having difficulty with.

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But do you notice how it spirals out? We do not look at the way this is used everywhere else in Scripture and then read that into this passage.

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That's the mistake I think that's being made. So I've already said I think that that's a mistake.

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I think it's a mistake to make an argument from commentaries. I think it's a bad argument to make an argument based on translations.

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But I think what is a good argument is to look at how the word is used in its immediate context.

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Now, I've already shown that believers doesn't only mean believers. Pestos can mean faithful.

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However, we don't just see it saying, and his children are believing, for an overseer must be a good steward.

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No, wait. We just skipped something. That's in every one of them. It says, and his children are believers and not open to the charge of debauchery.

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It's very interesting, the wording there. I think that what you see here is a connection.

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Because when you read it in the New English Translation, I do like this one better. It says, with faithful children who cannot be charged with debauchery.

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In other words, the clause here, and this was the interesting thing. I referred to a pastor who was making the argument that these are believing children.

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But yet, in his argument, when he made his argument, he made an argument that the term here, and, is a direct connection.

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This is directly connecting. Now, it's and in our English, but there actually is, in the

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Greek, it's the believing not open to a charge of debauchery. So the word and, you don't see.

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You don't see kaia there. It is just, it's added in here in our

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English Translation. And so, what you have is that it should be, children are believers not open to charge of debauchery or insubordination.

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In other words, we have a qualifier for what this word believer means.

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The immediate context is providing for you and I an understanding of these children that are believers.

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These children that are believers are qualified by not, in other words, someone can't make an open charge of debauchery or insubordination.

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If you want to read again, if you look at the New American Standard, a more literal translation of this, that one is going to read that having children who believe not accused of dissipation or rebellion.

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This is actually a better reading than the ESV because it doesn't have the word and. I think the

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ESV causes a little bit of confusion because the word and makes it seem like there's a conjunction here that is two separate thoughts.

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Having children that are believing and having children not accused of dissipation or rebellion.

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That is not correct. I think the New American Standard here is a little bit better because what it's showing is that the belief is being qualified by not accused of dissipation or rebellion.

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That's the qualifier. And so is not being accused of dissipation or rebellion, is that a quality of belief?

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In other words, if you're a believer in Christ, can you be someone who's characterized as having dissipation or rebellion?

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Well, there's nothing actually in salvation that restricts a person unless you're going to argue that you're a sinless perfectionist and therefore all believers never sin.

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People can still sin as a believer. But the issue, notice it's not an accusation of it.

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In other words, the idea is that this isn't their lifestyle. Now, MacArthur years ago back in the 80s or 90s when he preached through this, he argued that what this is saying is that the children, not that they wouldn't be rebellious at times, all children are rebellious at times.

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So it's not that you can't make the accusation ever in the life of a child, but it is the fact that while they're in the home, they're not openly rebellious to the things of Christ.

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They're not openly arguing against the beliefs of their parents.

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Now, that's how he at least used to argue. But I agree with his old argument there.

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What you see here is because belief, the children who believe are qualified as not accused of dissipation or rebellion, we now know what believe means.

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Believe means that they are not accused of dissipation or rebellion.

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Well, that's not an attribute of belief in Christ, but it is an attribute of faithfulness or trustworthiness.

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Therefore, as I look at the immediate context, I don't need to jump outside the

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Scriptures to understand the term pestos, but as I do, as I said,

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I don't see that every passage in the Scriptures is always referring to this as being only belief in Christ when applied to people.

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Luke 16, Luke 19. That takes away that whole argument. Now, if the argument is that the word must be believers in Christ because that's the way it's used everywhere else, and to use it as faithful here would be an exception, well, that's a problem when you already have the exception of Luke 16 and Luke 19.

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Therefore, that's not an exception anymore. But it would be an exception here to say that all these other attributes that you see here are qualifiers of the man's character, an attribute of his character, and to say this one is not, now it is an exception.

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So it now becomes an exception clause to the rest of the qualifiers for a pastor.

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That being an exception makes it where you need to question more the argument of the children being believers in Christ.

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Where am I going though? Notice, my argument is all based out of Titus. All of the argumentation that I have given for believer that is outside of Titus is starting in the wrong hermeneutic.

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You never, ever start outside and move in.

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That is eisegesis, reading something into the text. Exegesis is when we start from the immediate text and exegete it outward.

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So we start at the immediate context and work our way out. Those are the rules of hermeneutics.

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And so, as we look at that, I have to say that the word believe can be faithful.

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The word believe does mean faithful in other passages of the New Testament in Luke. That the word is qualified here in its immediate context as not accused of dissipation or rebellion.

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That is a qualifier of faithfulness, not belief. And the fact that in the immediate context, this would be an exception clause to the fact that all of these are character issues of the man.

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And this would be an exception to that. So as I look through that, I hope that you've seen how not only to interpret

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Scripture and how not to interpret Scripture, you've also seen how not to make bad arguments and how to identify some bad arguments when handling the

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Scriptures. But I hope what you've also noticed is that we start at the immediate context, we work our way out, and often we don't need to go to other passages to understand the meaning of this passage.

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Now we don't see anything in Timothy where the other passage you can look to that talks about as a parallel passage would be 1

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Timothy 3. Because 1 Timothy 3 is another passage that also talks about the qualifications of both deacons and pastors.

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And so as you look there, you end up seeing that there's qualifications for an overseer.

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Now there you don't see it saying that his children must be believers. In this passage, we see when speaking of the children, in verse 4, we have other qualifications here as well.

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There's 15 qualifications of a pastor here. Again, if you get my qualification of church leaders quick reference, you can see them all labeled, and I define them,

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I put them into issues of character, which they're all kind of character issues, but issues that are specifically of the character of the man versus his ministry and then his family.

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And so I break those down into those three categories. I think they're all character issues, but just the idea of the makeup of his character versus the character of ministry and the character of his family.

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The ones that deal with the character of his family in 1 Timothy 4, it says, he must be one who manages his household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity, but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he take care of the church of God?

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So that's what it references when it comes to the managing of the house.

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Now notice, it's keeping the children under control with all dignity. So it's not that they're under control out of fear.

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It's that they're controlled. Well, that's the same thing that you end up seeing in Titus when it says not being accused of dissipation or rebellion.

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They're faithful. Both passages have the concept of that the children are faithful or trustworthy, not rebellious.

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They're under control, but that the man is doing so with dignity. You see this.

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So I can look at the only parallel passage that we have, and there seems to be support even there to argue for faithfulness over believer.

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So as we conclude, I think all of the argumentation that could be made leads us to believe that a man who's qualified for the pastorate must have children that at least while they're in his house are not openly rebellious to the gospel.

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They're not openly rebellious overall. They're not accused of dissipation or as the

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English Standard Version interprets that word dissipation as debauchery.

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It's the argument here that we see in the Timothy passage that the children are under control.

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So with each of these, what I think we see clearly in my mind, maybe hopefully in yours now, and if you disagree with me, feel free to email me your disagreement.

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Email me and let me know that you think that I'm wrong. It's not a big deal if you think

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I'm wrong. I'm not going to freak out on people. The thing is that I want to look at this and say, okay, if I'm wrong, give me scripture.

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Give me a biblical argument for this. Show me within the scriptures. Show me how my hermeneutic, how

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I applied the hermeneutic incorrectly. That's what I tried to do. I tried to show logically where an argumentation broke down.

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I tried to show hermeneutically where an argument broke down. Come to me that way. Email me at info at strivingforeternity .org.

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That's info at strivingforeternity .org. That's where you could get a hold of me, and there

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I'd be able to see what your argument is. If I'm wrong, I will come right on these same airwaves and correct it.

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Not a problem. I should also say you can email me if you have something you want us to discuss.

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Like I said, we had half a dozen people that came to me, different people. I had two of the guys on my board of directors that wanted me to address this.

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I had my son -in -law that asked me what the meaning of this was. Then I just had three other people, one that emailed me, one that had sent me a message on Facebook, and one that texted me, all that were struggling with this passage that wanted an answer.

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If there's things you want us to address, you would like us to show you how to hermeneutically work through a passage of Scripture that seems difficult for you, feel free to email us at info at strivingforeternity .org.

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We'll add that to the list. We've had this on the list for a little while. We finally got to it, but I hope this is clarified that the qualification for a pastor is not that his children must be believers in Christ, but that they must be faithful.

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They must be under control. They must not be characterized by rebellion or debauchery.

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I hope that you've gained a lot from this. I hope that this is helpful for you. I hope if you've been questioning this, if you've been wondering about this, that maybe from now on you won't be wondering.

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I hope this is helpful. I do encourage you again, I want to let you know, May 30th, really helpful if you would join us.

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It is a free event, Snatch Them from the Flames, Home Edition. It is free.

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It's something that you'll be able to enjoy. Sit back in your own home and get good teachings on both the

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Scriptures and also on false teachers, how to discern them.

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It's something that I think will benefit you greatly. This is something all believers,

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I think, will benefit from. I think that everybody can really get value out of this.

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We'll give you plenty of examples of false teachers and people that you should be concerned about, people that are very well known.

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This conference is for anyone who wants to understand God's Word and how to use it to discern the truth from error.

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That's what we're going to look to do. If you are someone that wants to learn how to handle

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God's Word, how to understand it, and use it to discern truth from error, then this is a conference for you,

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May 30th. All the details will be up at strivingforeternity .org. They're not there yet, but they will be shortly.

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I hope we're going to have the registration up. It's something that we hope will be beneficial to all of you.

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We want to remind you to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

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That's a wrap. This podcast is part of the Striving for Eternity ministry. For more content or to request a speaker or seminar to your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

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