65 - People in the Church, Part 2 | Qualifications of Church Leaders

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of striving for eternity. We are going through our book, or our class actually, on systematic theology. We're going through this as an introduction.

This specifically is what we're calling God's plan for the ages, the doctrines of the church, and the doctrine of last things, those end time things. So we hope that you follow along with us, that you are not just jumping in in the middle, just saying.

It's always good to start our theology in the beginning, and we're like 65 lessons in. That's a lot. But you could pick up a syllabus at the website at strivingforeternity .org. Just go to the store, pick up the Syllabus for Systematic Theology Book 4.

That is our introductory class for systematic theology. It has four volumes to it. The reason we're doing it that way is so that each volume, about 20 -25 lessons, and with that each of the volumes or the syllabuses will cost $25.

So basically we're trying to get it so that all the syllabuses would be about the same price. Today's lesson is going to be continuing what we started last class, which is lesson number two, people in the church.

Now as we mentioned last class, or we looked at last class, we looked at the membership of church. And we mentioned this week we're going to look at the officers. So that's going to be the focus for tonight, or today, whenever you're watching, maybe even in the morning.

We're going to discuss the officers of the church. And there is, you know, we mentioned last week the responsibility that members have to their congregation, the fact that we want to keep the church pure, that we looked at the idea of church discipline.

Now we're looking at this idea of officers. And here is the thing. When we talk about officers, we have to be aware that, well, not everyone's qualified. Okay, now there are differing views. We're going to be looking at in the next lesson, we're going to look at different types of church government.

And within that you're going to see different views of officers. Some churches, some of the Presbyterian churches, would say that people should not be doing things, like you shouldn't be partaking of the Lord's Supper unless an officer of the church, a pastor of the church, is there.

Some of them will say that you can't even open air preach unless you're ordained. Some say that you can't publicly criticize other Christians that say things in public unless you're ordained as a pastor.

Now that's one extreme. The other extreme would say that anyone can be a pastor, anyone can get up, preach at a pulpit, anyone can just do because God has given each of us the Holy Spirit and therefore each of us can just do that.

You'll see a lot of people that start home churches. They just start a church in their home typically, not always, but for a lot of people it's because they can't get along in church because they, I find a lot of people, clearly not true for all home churches, but I know a lot of people that say they're part of a home church because they don't want the accountability of a church, or they really have an issue, I've seen a lot of guys that have pride issues, and they don't like going to church because people point that out.

How dare they? Well, the reality is that they just set themselves up and say, I'm a church. I knew one person who just basically preaches the gospel on the streets on Sunday instead of going to church and says, this is my church, here's my congregation, I'm the pastor.

It's like, that's not the congregation, they kind of come and go every week, so when we talk about church, and this is one of the things I have with guys that say that the street corner, preaching the gospel on the street corner is church, because the church is different.

The church has members, the church has pastors and deacons, has officers, you don't have that on the street. Now, I understand there's some churches, we mentioned last class, that don't have membership.

If you go to some of the Calvary chapels, for example, and I'm not pointing them out for any, it's just that that's one of the things, they don't have a church membership. It's not that I'm saying they're bad, it's not, but they don't have church membership, but they know who the members of the church are.

I mean, they may not have a role of people that they're members, you know, but they know who's coming. They have a membership that is looking to serve one another. So it's, when we're saying membership, it's not that you've signed along a dotted line or something.

But there's officers as well. So let's take a look. We're going to spend a time, I'm going to go through some titles of the officers, I'm going to explain them, and I'm going to spend a bulk of this time on the qualifications of the officers.

I'm going to get into some controversial things. Can women be in leadership? We're going to discuss that. Yikes! Yeah, that's right. We're going to say what the Bible says. I'm not going to give you my opinion, but we're going to point some things out that, well, it's probably going to upset some people on either side of the issue.

Just saying. Because I'm going to say things that, when you go to the two extremes, both sides are not going to like what I'm going to have to say. I'm just saying. But I'm going to tell you what I think the Bible teaches.

And if you're going to disagree with me, I don't mind. Disagree all you want. Just disagree with me with Scripture, okay? Actually, if you want to disagree with me, you can actually email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org.

Send us an email. Academy at striving for eternity dot org. Email us the Scriptures you think would better support your position. Alright? So let's start. As we look at officers, let's start with the office of pastor.

The pastors. As we look at the pastors, if you look in your syllabus, which I hope you have. You know, I didn't mention this at the beginning, but the purpose of having the syllabus. The syllabus is helpful because what it does is it allows you to fill in the blanks that we're going to have.

It's also going to allow you to take your own notes. It's going to allow for you to get more out of these classes. So I encourage you to go to Store Dutch Striving for Eternity. Pick up the syllabus. They're really not that much, actually.

We're thinking of starting to run some specials where you can get four syllabuses for $75 or all six that we have currently for $100. So if you want to get them all and do that, it reduces the cost. But I don't think that's on the website yet.

So alright. So let's look at titles of pastor, alright? There are three primary names for the office of pastor. And note that these are delineated because of the work of a pastor. That's your blank there, the work.

So the idea is that this is not three separate offices. Now this has been a thing that in some church governments, as we're going to look at next class, some church governments are going to have a different hierarchy based on these titles and they're going to make the different titles a different office.

I am making the case that I believe there is one office, one position of pastor. You can call them bishop, you can call them elder, you can call them pastor or overseer. Those three titles are titles that describe the different type of work of this office.

Now I'm calling the office the office of pastor. I say that because I've seen a couple things. So let's describe how this breaks down. You see in some churches where you have guys that are pastors but they're paid and pastors that are not paid.

And you know what a lot of them do? They differentiate them by saying these are pastors and elders. The pastors are paid and the elders are not. And what they effectively do, though they don't plan to do that, they actually kind of make it that there's two, there's a hierarchy, there's two offices.

There's the office of elder and there's the office of pastor. And what inevitably happens is that the office of pastor is higher in the hierarchy. Some churches are going to say there's the pastor and then associate pastors, same hierarchy happens.

Some churches are going to see that there's a pastor, there's an elder who's unpaid, a pastor who's paid and a bishop who's over the church, over several churches. And that's when you start getting into denominations and things like that.

So, those are how you have that. So, the office of pastor. We're going to start with this title of bishop and you're going to see as we look at this that there are times where all three of these are used interchangeably for the role of or the office of, I should say, the office of the pastor.

Okay, it's one office. But there's three different roles and these roles delineate the type or designate the type of work that each role has. So if you think about it this way, you have a person in a position that he is at times he's doing bishop type work, there's times where he's doing pastoring or shepherding type work, there's times where he's acting as an elder, okay?

So, with those I want to break those three down so we see what those roles entail and realize that as I'm doing this, this is describing that one office and I believe everyone that has that title is in that office is equal in authority.

I don't believe there's a hierarchy. This is, obviously you're going to see where I'm going to differ from denominations that have a hierarchy above the local church. I'm not saying it's unbiblical to do that, I'm just saying that the only two offices that I see in scripture is the office I'm calling pastor and the office I'm calling deacon.

Those two. I'm not saying that there can't be more organization, but I am saying that we have to be careful not to create hierarchy that's not in the scriptures. And so I see pastors, deacons, just that simple.

And so we want to look at this and I would argue, some may question and say, but when you have multiple pastors, there should be the guy that's preaching at the pulpit, he's the pastor. They call him a senior pastor nowadays as a title.

The reality is that I call him the preaching pastor and there's some churches, like the brethren churches, where they have several pastors or elders and they just rotate around. And these pastors, each preaches a different week, so there is no one guy that's at the pulpit, they're all at the pulpit.

I'm not saying that's an unbiblical model. I don't know that it gives the best of consistency in the preaching, but it is a model that they've done to try to show the equality of all of the pastors. And so I like that aspect of it.

I believe that there is one among equals in different areas of ministry. So when I was pastoring at the church full time, I was the preaching pastor. Now when it came to decisions that had to do with preaching, what text I'm going to preach, I had the say.

Now if we would all meet, I would discuss it with all the other men, but as I did so, if it came to one guy wanting to have 1 Timothy preached, another guy wanted Titus preached, I would choose. If there was disagreement, I would be the one to break the tie, kind of, if you think of it that way.

We always tried to get unity, and for the most part, I think we did in a lot of areas. But if there was a tie that had to be broken, I would break it. However, when it came to things like the nursery, well the pastor over the worship had that responsibility.

And because he had that responsibility, anything dealing with worship, whether it was the songs that were sung, whether it was because we had under that area, it's just how we broke it down, there's nothing biblical about it, it's just how we broke it down, nursery was under that area, well he got to choose who would serve in the nursery, who ran the nursery, things like that.

That was left for him. And if there was disagreement that someone would bring to me about something in the worship, I would turn to that pastor and say, he's in charge of the worship service, he makes that decision, you've got to go and talk to him.

And if they don't want to talk to him, he makes the decision. And if there would ever be a disagreement made between me and another pastor, this pastor over the worship would break the tie. Not that I could think of a time that that happened.

But you see, the idea being that we're all equal, we're all equal in authority, but there's going to be areas, we can't all be everything. So what we do, just because in the larger churches, you have to have some way of managing things better, and the way we chose to manage it was to break things up into teams.

And so in doing so, what you have is you have teams of ministries. And we'd have a pastor and a deacon over each team. That's how we chose to do it. So when you looked at it that way, you end up in a point where you have everyone's equal, but there's areas where one pastor's going to have just a little bit more authority in that area because he's focused in that area.

I hope that makes some sense. Alright, so let's look at the topic of bishop. Bishop is the idea of an overseer. If we look at 1 Timothy 3 .1, we see this is what Paul says, and the saying is trustworthy.

If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. That's the term bishop. That word for overseer is the Greek word for bishop. You also see this used in Philippians 1, verse 1, Philippians 1 .1, Paul and Timothy, servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the, notice this, overseers and deacons.

Those are the only two offices that we see. The overseers and the deacons. And this is why I make the case that we only have those two offices. This role of bishop or overseer, the significance of it is it deals with the administration of the church, the running of things, the organizing of things.

That's the role of, that's the mindset of the pastor should be an overseer, should be administering the church. It's one of the reasons why a pastor must have the gift of administration, the ability to organize.

Because his role as an overseer is to oversee. See, just saying. So he should be overseeing. The second is that of a shepherd or pastor. Let's look at Ephesians 4, Ephesians 4, 11 -15. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherd teachers.

I actually, where you see the word and there, in the Greek the and is not there, kaia is not there, so it's just shepherd teachers. So many people take that as one office. So you have an office of apostles, I think they no longer exist.

The office of prophets, I don't think that exists. The office of evangelists, those are what we call missionaries today. Then you have shepherds, teachers. To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body until we all obtain to the unity of the faith of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature to manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by waves and carried about with every wind of doctrine by human cunning and craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way to Him as head into Christ. So I'm reading that extended passage because when you see kind of that role that you see as this shepherd, do you see that his role is to do some feeding and some leading and some preaching?

I think all of that's involved, those offices were given for that. But we see this also in Acts chapter 20, Acts 20 verse 28, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which obtains in your own blood.

Now here's why this one's interesting. Notice pay careful attention to all the flock. This is the idea of shepherding. And then in the same passage, it uses the word for overseer, okay? Let's look at 1 Peter 5, 1 and 2.

So I exalt the elders among you as a fellow elder and a witness of the suffering of Christ as well as a partaker of the glory that is going to be revealed. Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion but willingly as God would have you not the shameful gain but eagerly.

So here you have all three roles in two verses but one passage. He mentions elders, talks about the idea of shepherd the flock and the oversight. So in here you have all three, that's why I say these are interchangeable.

These three offices are all interchangeable. And the idea of pastoring or shepherding is the idea of feeding and leading and preaching, proclaiming the truth, teaching, helping the flock to mature. The last role is that of elder which is the idea of being worthy of respect.

And we already saw some of those but let's look, do we have Acts 14? And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord whom they believed.

First Timothy 5 .17, let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the preaching. You see the idea of the worthy of respect? Titus 1 .5, thus this is why we left you in Crete so that you may put what remained in order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you.

So as we see this, the significance of this is that typically, a typical title for a pastor is an office to be respected by the membership. There's a respect factor here. And we're going to look at the qualifications, I'm going to hold off on the qualifications because I'm going to try to bring the qualifications for pastors and deacons together in one.

So, I want to go through the two offices and then we're going to look at their qualifications. But what you see there is that the qualifications are relating to their personal character, their family, and their ministry.

Those three elements. And as you're going to see in just a few minutes, the majority of it deals with the personal character issue. I find that interesting. It's less about the ministry, less about their family, but most of the qualifications deal with character, how you behave.

So let's look at the deacons. You can look in detail at this, really, in 1 Timothy 3, 8 -13. This is where it will deal. But the first deacons, we think, may have been in Acts 6, and we'll get there. So again, I'll look at the qualifications in a bit, but you're going to see the same thing with the deacons, personal character, family life, ministry.

So there's a, in 1 Timothy 3, 13, there is a reward to being a deacon for those who serve well as deacons, gain a good standing for themselves, and also great confidence that is in Christ Jesus. So you see that there is a reward given.

They'll obtain an excellent standing before God. They'll obtain assurance from God. There's a selection process. I think that I would say the first we have is in Acts 6, verse 2, and the twelve summoned the full number of disciples and said, it is not right that we should preach, that we should give up preaching the Word of God to serve tables.

Now, to serve tables, you go, well how is that a deacon? Well, that's actually the name deaconess. Deaconess means to be a waiter of tables, to wait on tables. That's the idea. And so what you see, I think, in Acts 6 is that the apostles said, look, let's bring up, gather men together and let's have people that are going to be the waiters of tables.

So I think what you have here, and this is where I make a distinction, the way I think I see this in Scripture, is that the church selects from among themselves men that they think would make good deacons and the pastors of the church would end up, from those people that the congregation brings up, the names the congregation brings up, the pastors would select.

I think it's the opposite when it comes to the pastors. I think the pastors would end up giving up the names and the congregation selects. So I think that's a distinction that I kind of make between these two offices of how I think that I see these in Scripture, is that the pastors will select pastors and the congregation votes on or chooses from among those names, where the deacons, the congregation will give up the names and select them and then the pastors would vote on or choose them.

So now, what's the responsibilities? And you're seeing here in Acts 6 this delineation I think that's being made. The pastors are going to be focused on oversight, as we've said, leadership, shepherding, going to deal with the preaching, teaching aspects.

So what does the deacon do? I think the deacons are, they're there to serve the needy. They're there to take care of the things for the pastors, to free them up for the study of the Word of God, for prayer, for the oversight and management.

They're to be spiritual leaders. They are leaders in a sense where they are to lead, but they're not to oversee of their own authority. So in other words, the idea being is that you have the pastor who has the oversight.

He's responsible for God for the decisions that get made. Now, he's going to hand down some of the daily work to the deacons. So where I make this distinction is that you have pastors who have the long-term vision, who have the big picture view, and then you have the deacons who are going to focus more on the day-to-day details.

Does that make sense? So big picture, pastors. Day-to-day details, deacons. For those who are in business and understand the concept, you can think of it almost like the pastors are the board of directors, they're the ones setting the big decisions.

They're ultimately the ones responsible for the decisions, but then they have an executive, you know, chief executing officer or president that carries that out every day and reports back to them. So with that, I want to spend time going over the qualifications because this is, excuse me, where we're going to spend most of the time here in describing the qualifications.

But I do want to make sure it's clear that the two distinctions in these roles, pastor is going to be overseeing, leading, teaching, okay, shepherding the flock. The deacons are going to be under the pastors to help them to carry out the things that the pastors set on the daily activities.

So I understand that some churches, it's like the deacons take care of the money and the building because the pastors are not supposed to know anything about the money. I don't see that in Scripture, I'm just saying.

They brought the money to pastors, you know, at different times. You know, who did the money come to in Acts? It came to the apostles. Now there is a time though, the daily writing of checks and things like that, yeah, I think that's a daily activity the deacons would do.

But I don't think it's this hard line where pastors shouldn't be involved in any money. Is it wise? Yeah. It is wise in the sense that you don't want to have, I've seen where some pastors are influenced because they don't want to say something to someone that they think is a big money man and that might be giving to a church and that sometimes influences people.

The irony is that sometimes those big money men aren't giving anything but the pastor just thinks like, oh, well they got a lot of money so I want to keep them happy. Never make decisions based on that, just saying.

But the flip side is, you know, if someone is unhappy with the church, you know how you usually find out first? They stop giving. So in a sense, your giving can reveal your spiritual heart for the church and that may be one of the first things, you know, there are times where as someone who was a deacon in a church for many years before being a pastor, I used to see that someone's giving would drop off.

I would go and talk to that person because often what I'd find is one of two things. There was either a spiritual issue there that they were struggling with or having problems with the church or it was that they were running into financial troubles and they were too proud to say anything.

And so then we as a church could help them. But let's look at the qualifications. I'm going to give you a chart. The first chart is going to be, and I have it here, this is, I have it, it's always good when I cover my face, right?

Yeah, it looks much better. But I have a chart here, this is what we're going to go over and I can make this available to you. Actually, what we may do, like we have, do we have it, we don't have it here anymore.

Okay. We have our, what we mentioned last class, our process of reconciliation card. It's a nice hard card. I may do the same thing with the qualifications of a pastor just so you have this. If this is helpful to you for a quick reference.

So we may make that available. But we're going to go through all those so why don't we put that up. And this is, I hope that you can read this. It might be a little bit hard to read. So with this though, if you look, this right here that I'm focused on is just going to be only on the issue that you see of character.

Now, the next one that you're going to see, I'm going to deal with that and that will be one where again, like I said, that's going to be one dealing with the other two, the family and the ministry. Which should tell you something, okay?

If you look, can we flip to the other one just real quick to show? Okay, so you see the difference in the number of, it's like ministry and family is like a third as many as the character. So this is just to show that character is a big deal.

So as you see here, actually before we go to that, let me just make the mention, if we could. So you see there I have elder or pastor, whichever title you want to have. But you have the pastor and then you have the deacons or servants.

Now I'm saying servant. The deacons, I understand historically that deacons became leaders in many churches. Deacons became where they were, it became really, at least in Baptist churches especially, you had your pastor and then your deacons.

Your deacons were overseeing, they were acting as pastors. But they were really not fulfilling the role of deacon or they were doing both, okay? Now, if you view the deacon as a servant, a waiter of tables, and not as an overseer, you won't have problems with what I'm going to say next.

And that's the, this is why I'm spending the time to say that a deacon is a servant, not a leader. They don't have the oversight. The pastor has the oversight. The deacon serves. With that said, I believe that the scriptures allow for a deaconess, a woman deacon.

So you have male deacons, you have female deacons. Male deacons that serve the church as a whole, female deacons are going to be more specialized to work with maybe people that, you know, just the women, okay?

Or things like that. But they are female servants. They're not making decisions. Now, if you're in a church where the deacons are the leaders, then I would say you shouldn't have deaconesses. You shouldn't have women in that role.

But really, I would say to correct it, actually, why don't we, if we have, do we have 1 Timothy 3, 8 to 13? Okay, good. Let's read through this and let me show where this is before we get into it because this may be new to some people, alright?

So let's look at what the scripture says. This is 1 Timothy 3, 8 to 13. Deacons. Now, this is a male in the Greek. This is in the masculine sense, so this is clearly referring to men. Deacons, likewise, now the likewise is referring back to the pastors because the pastors were saying that it was just to, it was just to the men and it had qualifications of the pastor.

You see that in 1 Timothy 3, 1 to 7, deals with the pastors. But look at here, it says, deacons likewise must be, now notice all these are character issues, must be dignified, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for dishonest gain.

They must hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience and let them also be tested and let them serve as deacons if they prove themselves blameless. Now, here in verse 11 is the problem. It says, likewise, therefore, or likewise, their women, okay?

And it's not really there. In the Greek, it says, likewise, women must be dignified. And so, the word there in the Greek could refer to wives of men if the man is referenced. And so, what many people do, many translations do, is say their wives, saying the deacon's wives.

So, deacon's wives, they say, should likewise be dignified, not slanderous, not sober-minded, faithful in all things. I actually believe that this is women. Likewise, what's the likewise refer back to?

Well, just like in verse 8, where you see deacons likewise, deacons, just like the pastors, have all these qualifications, likewise, so there's qualifications for the male deacons. And here you have women likewise.

So, now you have, again, you see this thing, I think that's three separate, not offices, but three separate qualifications. Now, why would there be qualifications for the deacons and not the pastor's wives?

That's just one thing. I know there's people that make an argument for that to say that the deacons are doing more day-to-day stuff, therefore, their wives are more involved, and therefore, they have qualifications.

So, they have qualifications, their qualifications, not only, I would say, these women have the qualifications that you see in verses 8 -10, but also, they have the extra qualifications that they must be dignified, not slanderous, sober-minded, and faithful in all things.

Now, look at verse 12, let deacons, it goes back to the men. Now what you have is things that women can't be. See, when it has the likewise, the likewise referring to the male deacons, all those things that are from 8 -10 are true for women as well.

Women should have those characters, but they should also have these, in verse 11, those separate characters. But then we go back to the men, let deacons each be the husband and one wife, or one woman man, we'll get into that, managing their children in their own households well, for those who serve well as a deacon, gain a good standing for themselves, also with great confidence in faith in Christ.

Okay, so you see there, what I'm saying is, I do believe that if women are acting in the role of a servant, they can be a female deacon. I have no problem with that, because they're not making decisions, they're not having oversight.

Okay? Clearly, what I'm saying is that I don't believe that women can be in the role of pastor. We have a video in our Hormoneus class that deals with that. But I believe that 1 Timothy 2 .12 and following is very clear that women should not be in a role of authority over men.

Therefore, they shouldn't be making decisions and having the oversight. When you look at 1 Timothy 3 .1 -7, when it's talking about the pastor, there's no mention of women, it's all the role of the men who have to do that.

Then you have these servants, and I think it's broken out into male and female servants. So if we go back to the chart now, with all that explained, you see there in the big blue area, it says elder or pastors, and that's true for all.

And then there's the deacons, you see that's kind of shrunken down a little. And then you see it broken down as kind of a subcategory under deacons as male deacons and female deacons or deaconesses. So let's look at the qualifications here.

Really quick. We're going to go through this quickly. I can provide these for you if you need, but blameless is the first one. And I put this so you see some of the overlap. You see there's overlap here on where the pastors have qualifications and where the deacons have qualifications and how they overlap.

So basically, I think everyone should be blameless. Really I think where it says likewise for the female deacons, many of the things that are for the male deacons apply as well. So I would say all three really should be blameless, but the scripture is speaking just to the men there in that area.

But blameless means it is in the Greek to not nail, it's basically not to be nailed. It's to not have something that someone can hold against you. It doesn't mean we do not sin. It means that when we do sin, we are quick to reconcile, we're quick to ask forgiveness and bring reconciliation.

That's the idea there. So you see that of both male deacons and elders or pastors. There's temperate. We see both pastors and the female deacons are told to be temperate. And this in the Greek means wineless or unmixed with wine.

It's the idea of being sober. Being sober, not necessarily that you don't drink. It's really the idea that in your decision making in your life, you are sober minded. You're not given over. Now, I think that there may be reason for female deacons because women tend to, not always, but tend to be more emotional.

And so the idea here is to be less emotionally minded, more level headed in decision making. For the elders or pastors, they should be sober minded. Sober minded is the Greek word, has the sense of being sane, curbing one's desires, being in self-control.

And so a pastor should be self-controlled. Good behavior. You see this one for the pastors. And this is the word that means well arranged, simply or modest. So it's the idea that you're well disciplined in life.

Next is hospitable, used of pastors. And this one is the idea of showing love to strangers, being generous to guests is the idea here. The next one, number six, is not given to wine or not given to much wine.

I find it interesting that people make a distinction here. I was once in a church where someone said he didn't want to be a pastor because he liked to drink wine. And so as a deacon he can have some wine because to the pastor it says not be given to wine and for the deacon, the male deacon, it's not given to much wine.

And some people tried to make a distinction there between the much and not. But it really has neither one of them matter. It means the idea of not being a slave to alcohol or to other things, any addiction.