Have You Raised or Lowered God's Standards for Elders?

And you know one of the things that you mentioned in your sermon that I Honestly had never thought about and it just really struck me was you can be a man Who's never been divorced and you are not loving your wife.

The Meaning of “One-Woman Man” Beyond Divorce Status

Well, you're not a one-woman man. Exactly so it doesn't so it goes beyond just Just he's never been divorced, which is a view that I've held for and was taught to hold for a long time.

But.

There's just so much depth there. It's more than just. You know, here's the cliff and if you take one step beyond the cliff, well, that's it. You're done but there's it in it envelops a lot more of being a Christ honoring Christ following husband.

Yeah, if the quality if the. The qualification is simply that you've never been divorced Then the qualification could simply be you have a wife who endures a lot and puts up with you.

Yeah, which and I will be my wife puts up with.

But it's more than you have. You happen to have a wife who will endure and this guy wasn't lucky enough to have a wife that endures your Constant barrage of whatever it is that you love her. So you love her.

Well, you love her like Christ loves the church.

You're an example to the flow and she willingly and joyfully submits to you as Christ does there is the church does to cry, right?

Yeah.

So so also as we consider this issue of Marriage, you know one woman man. Is you look at all of these qualities their qualities or characteristics of a person that are present as we said before. And in all the other ones, we don't say that if a person was ever not that That they're disqualified is it's what are you now, but this is the one exception that many people take, you know.

If you've ever been divorced Then it doesn't matter what you are now. There's this thing and it disqualifies you forever. And if you do that, then you put this one Characteristic this one quality in a category by itself that does not fit any of the other categories.

And so presently. You know, do you? Love your wife assuming you're married. Are you a one woman man?

Divorce Before Conversion and Present Faithfulness

Yeah, and you know and one other question specifically regarding the question of divorce is if a man Was divorced before he was a believer. The scripture is clear. Once you become a believer. You are a new creation and.

So.

Obviously, we would not expect him to have You know perfectly healthy Christ honoring marriage before he was converted but after conversion. Yes, so yeah present reality just like we talked about before.

Not Lowering or Raising God's Standards for Elders

So one of the things that we really want to Emphasize as we we wrap this this episode up is that these are the standards that God has given us. We are we are not at Liberty to lower that standard. Nor are we at the Liberty to be more severe in the standard than God is.

Yeah, so Lowering the standards perhaps easy to see we don't want to take these and say but there are exceptions to these standards. But being more severe, how can we be more severe? Well one would be to expect perfection.

Blameless sounds like perfection. But there is no one who is perfect except for Christ. We understand we're sinful fallen people and pastors are sinful fallen people. And if you don't think that then there's a whole nother conversation because you're putting men on pedestals to where they don't belong.

They have feet of clay. Absolutely. So it's not speaking about perfection. And so we want to hold the standard and say he must be above approach without taking it to a higher level than that that God didn't mean for us to take it to.

So how do we do that and. That's where I think what Calvin said is is so helpful. You know, we're looking for a man who is not Dismissing his authority. He's not giving away his authority by a life that you look at and say no.

I cannot follow that man.