WWUTT 608 Permanently Disqualified?

In the Christian faith, it is essential that you be forgiven your sins, but it is not essential that you would serve in a position of leadership.

If a pastor has sinned, he must be forgiven, but maybe not restored to the position of pastor when we understand the text.

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Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We continue on with our study of 1 Timothy chapter 3,

Qualifications for Overseers. In verses 1 through 7, the Apostle Paul writes,

The saying is trustworthy, If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober -minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

He must manage his own household well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive. For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit, and fall into the condemnation of the devil.

Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

So over the last, well this week and last week, we've been covering this first verse and a half of chapter 3, the saying is trustworthy, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, that position of pastor or elder, he desires a noble task.

This is a position of noble character, therefore an overseer must be above reproach, he must be above blame.

No one can bring fault against him, but he has outstanding character, and is not only a good example, an example of Christian maturity to his own congregation, but even to people in the world, because we have toward the end of this paragraph, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace.

So we've talked about different things related to what it means to be a pastor above reproach, and then yesterday talking about him being the husband of one wife, and these things are interconnected, as we see that first qualification is that he must be above reproach, the next thing that follows that, is that he must have a good marriage.

He must manage his own household well, because if he cannot care for his own household, how is he expected to care for God's church?

Whatever we might be able to say of this man's character, let it be that he is a person who fears the

Lord, and shows that in his behavior, not just in the words that he preaches.

He can talk the talk, but he must also walk the walk. There is a consistency in his message.

He preaches it, and then he lives it out. He shows in his life that he believes what it is that he says.

If there is ever a disconnect there, because Paul talks about this with Titus, that there may be consistency in our speech.

If there is ever a disconnect there, if he falls into condemnation of the devil, if he at any point becomes unqualified, based on this list of qualifications that we see here in 1

Timothy 3 verses 1 -7, then he must be removed from the pulpit. And there may be some cases in which his sin is so great, he can't ever be returned to the pulpit.

He must certainly be called to repentance, and be restored to the body of Christ. But that may not necessarily mean that he would be restored to the pulpit of preaching to the body of Christ.

Jonathan Lehman is one of the pastors at Capitol Hill Baptist Church. This is the church that Mark Dever is the senior pastor of.

And this past Thursday, Dr. Lehman had an article in the Washington Post entitled, Why Repentant Pastors Should Be Forgiven, But Not Restored to the

Pulpit. And here is what Dr. Lehman had to say. Many Christians struggle with what it means to forgive a pastor who has committed a grievous act.

Recently, a Memphis megachurch pastor admitted to a sexual incident with a high school student 20 years ago in Texas.

I'm not in a place to render judgment over another church's matters. Yet, how should we think about forgiveness of a pastor?

Christians struggle with this question because Christianity centers on the idea of forgiveness. Step one in becoming a

Christian is acknowledging that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness. When the pastor is exposed, some push the message of forgiveness.

Who of us is without sin, they might say, drawing from Jesus in John 8.

Meanwhile, others object. But how can we trust this guy? Dr.

Lehman says, I side with the second group. A pastor occupies two offices or roles, the office of pastor and the office of church member.

The requirements for these offices are different. To be a pastor, you at least need to meet the qualifications

Paul gave to his disciple, Timothy. Therefore, an overseer must be above reproach.

The husband of one wife, sober minded, self -controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

That's verses two through three that we have read here. Above reproach, Dr. Lehman goes on to say, doesn't mean a pastor is sinless.

It means that if everything about his life is brought into the light, people would still trust him and follow him in the way of godliness.

Typically, there are two requirements of holding the office of church member, that one be baptized and repentant.

Forgiveness ordinarily, not always, involves two things, forswearing resentment subjectively and restoring a person to their previous office or role objectively.

To forgive a pastor means we don't personally hold his sin against him and that we restore him to his office of church member.

If he is repentant, he meets the qualification of membership. That doesn't mean we should restore him to the office of pastor.

Our forgiveness does not mean he magically meets those qualifications. His life, quite simply, is not above reproach.

By analogy, new installed President Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for crimes he might have committed against the

United States while president. Ford didn't explicitly make a distinction between Nixon as president and Nixon as citizen, but the pardon effectively pardoned

Nixon as citizen. It prevented him from being indicted and sent to jail.

It did not restore him to the presidency. Or think of the church members of the

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, remarkably, amazingly, forgiving

Dylan Roof after he killed nine of their members. That act of forgiveness did not release

Roof from the state's claim on him in his office or role as a citizen. Or think of a battered wife.

She can forgive the man, but that doesn't mean she must continue to affirm the abuser as her husband.

In all these examples, two or more offices or roles are at play, and both need to be considered.

It's important to forgive repentant pastors, but not to restore them to pastoral office for years or perhaps ever, depending on the nature of the sin, because Paul's qualifications pertain to the character.

A pastor is an extraordinary, ordinary Christian. A pastor is a teacher and a pattern setter, an example.

Therefore, he must be above reproach and trustworthy. Paul even tells

Timothy that his salvation and the salvation of his hearers depends upon Timothy keeping a close watch on his life and his teaching.

That's first Timothy 4 16. Teaching and life must go together.

So, yes, forgive the repentant pastor. Who of us is without sin?

But to love him, to love those he has hurt, to love the church, to love our watching neighbors and to love

God, please don't rush to restore him. Some pastors just shouldn't be restored.

So I hope that that article there from Dr. Lehman, I so appreciated that article. I just read it a couple of days ago.

I hope that that kind of shed some light a little bit more as we've been talking over the course of understanding what it means to be above reproach.

And then this week, looking at that qualification to be the husband of one wife.

Yes, there are sins. There are things that that pastor can do that would permanently disqualify him from ever returning to the office of pastor.

I think that I mentioned this when we first opened up our study of First Timothy. I can't

I can't remember if I mentioned it when we began this study or if it was another book study. But First Timothy is one of those books that some critics will question as to whether or not

Paul actually wrote it. And and Colossians is another one of those. First and Second Timothy, Titus and Colossians, they might be kind of the big four.

Did Paul really write those? There seems to be some language in those letters that is a little bit different than the way that he writes in any other letters.

Well, certainly, because in First and Second Timothy and Titus, Paul is writing to pastors. He's writing to mature teachers of the word of God.

So, of course, his language is going to sound a little bit different than the way he's like, say, rebuking the

Corinthians or rebuking the Galatians in writing to the Colossians. He was writing to a church that he had never heard of or sorry, he had heard of them.

He is writing to a church that he had never been to before, had never personally visited them and was responding to some concerns that Epaphras, essentially that church's pastor, had raised with Paul.

So he was addressing certain things. And that's why the language there in Colossians would have been a little bit different than others. Just because there are word usages in different letters does not does not immediately mean that a different person must have written that letter.

So the critics are a little kind of out of their minds when it comes to levying that criticism against a letter like First Timothy.

So when I was introducing this letter, or it may have been when we were introducing Colossians, I can't remember. But in introducing this letter,

I told a story about how important it was in the early church to verify and preserve these letters and the gospel accounts as genuine, written by the apostles and other first century eyewitnesses to the ministry of Christ.

And anything else was categorically rejected from the canon of scripture. Tertullian, who was a pastor in the second late second century, he wrote about in his work on baptism, an elder who had written a pseudonymous work entitled

The Acts of Paul and included in this compilation of works that were attributed to Paul.

He had written another letter to the Corinthians, which was third Corinthians. Now, we know that there is another letter that we just don't have record of.

It was the letter that Paul would have written prior to first Corinthians in canon. But we don't have it. It's it's lost to time.

But this man was claiming to have written another letter after second Corinthians and attributing it to Paul.

Tertullian writes that that man who was an elder in his church, that man was removed from his church.

He was defrocked. Essentially, he was removed from the office of pastor and he was banned from ever serving in the church again because he had written something that he was attributing to Paul, which

Paul did not actually write. That's how important it was for a pastor, particularly in that time, to stick with the scriptures and not try to add anything to the scriptures.

I don't know much more beyond that. What this man's motivation was, we know that whatever it was that he wrote has been completely destroyed.

There's no record of it. And we only have an account by Tertullian about what it was that this man did.

But it was so serious what he did, trying to present something as scripture, which wasn't scripture, that he was going to be removed from his office.

It was an abuse of his office. He could not be trusted as a teacher, because if people knew about this, then how would they know that the words that come from him really are the scriptures that he was quoting?

And of course, this was during a time in which nobody had a Bible. You didn't have a Bible in your own home or in your lap during church that you could read through and then check on the guy who's preaching it.

It was pretty much that a single church had all the scrolls that they were going to use, the Old Testament and the letters that had been written, the

Gospels as well. That was what they had. It was kind of a collection that was possessed by the church.

So if this guy is up there quoting scripture, how would you know that it really was scripture written by the actual apostles or the prophets and not something that he was just making up?

So therefore, because he had done this just a one time occasion, but it was a serious enough sin that he was removed from his office and never allowed to come back.

This is how important it is to consider this charge that we must be above reproach.

And if there is a church that tries to finagle that in some way or tries to diminish the seriousness of this qualification for an elder, that says more about that church than it says about the command that an overseer must be above reproach.

It is essential in the Christian faith to exercise forgiveness. That is absolutely essential.

So if an overseer does something that has brought sin upon himself or has even led his church astray, then he certainly should come before his church and seek their forgiveness, and they should forgive him.

If he is genuine in his forgiveness, then he should receive that forgiveness and be restored to the body.

That is absolutely something that we should do. It is a demonstration of the grace of God exercised within the members of our church.

And then that pastor is, as Dr. Lehman pointed out, there is restored to the office of member of the church after he has sought forgiveness and the church has forgiven him.

He is restored as a member. But depending on the sin, that doesn't necessarily mean that he is restored to the office of pastor.

As I said, it is absolutely essential that we exercise forgiveness in the body.

It is not essential that anyone be appointed to a position of leadership. It is not essential to your

Christian faith that you are appointed to leadership. So that man does not have to be there.

He can serve the church in another way. There are other ways that he could apply himself to the ministry of the church, even using the gifts that he has been given within that church.

But he cannot be pastor. And that church can exist without him in that position of pastor, because the church should not be built around him or his personality.

It is built on the truth claims of Jesus Christ and who he is. He is the cornerstone.

And then the testimony of the apostles, the foundation of the church is talked about in Ephesians chapter two.

These are the things that the church is built upon, not a pastor, not a personality, but Jesus Christ.

He is the rock of the church. So a person doesn't have to be in a position of leadership, but they definitely have to be forgiven.

They need to seek forgiveness. And then we need to forgive them. For Jesus said in Matthew chapter six, if you do not forgive people their sins when they sin against you, then neither will your heavenly father forgive you of your sin.

If we have the forgiveness of Christ upon us, our sins have been forgiven by Christ.

Then we demonstrate that forgiveness by forgiving others when they have sinned against us as well.

So this is that charge that has been given to an overseer to be above reproach.

This is that charge that is given to an overseer that he must be the husband of one wife.

And that ties into being a man who is above reproach. He demonstrates even within his own family, the love and affection for a bride, just as Christ has such a love and an affection for his bride.

The church whom he died for, laid his life down for, is washing with water through the sanctification of the word of God.

It is by the word of God that we heard the gospel and came to salvation.

It is by the word of God that we are kept in that salvation and we are growing in sanctification and holiness.

And we as weak people who still inhabit bodies of flesh, who still have finite minds that cannot remember an entire grocery list to go to the store and pick up, you know, you can't, you can't remember a whole list.

You got to write those things down. We are, we are limited. We are weak and we are feeble. And because we are so prone to making mistakes and faltering on this path of faith that we are on, then we need examples that are set up for us that we know that we can follow that, that guide us in what mature

Christian faith should look like. And the elder, the overseer, the pastor of a church is one of those examples that God has given for us.

We read this in Ephesians 4, beginning in verse 11. God gave the apostles and the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to mature 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 the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

That was Ephesians 4, verses 11 through 16, by the way. Next week, we continue with our study of 1

Timothy 3, verses 1 through 7. And I hope that as we have been going through this, you're not just looking at this as qualifications for overseers or a pastor in a church.

That's certainly the context. But that's not just the only application of what it is that we are reading here.

I hope that you are also applying this to yourself, that you know you need to be a person who is above reproach.

As Jesus said in Matthew 5, in the Sermon on the Mount, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

God, help us do that. Help us to walk in faithfulness and holiness to your great name.

Not to our name, but for your namesake. May we live and move and have our being.

When people look at us, they see a person who is different than those who live in this world.

They see somebody who is otherworldly. We are aliens and strangers in this world.

We are citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Teach us and help us to walk as citizens of your kingdom, even as we are here in this world, as those who are above reproach.

So when others who are in this world revile us for our good behavior in Christ, those accusations won't stick.

For it is others who will recognize the character of Christ that is upon us, we who desire to live like our

Savior, and thus point them to Christ, who forgives sins and gives eternal life.

We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.