In this two-part episode, Pastors Derek and Cliff discuss the New Testament qualifications for elders. This is a must-listen for those who are currently pastors or who desire to be pastors. This is also an important topic for church members so they can know what kind of men they should have leading their congregation.
Transcript
Derek: Welcome to the With All Wisdom podcast, where we are applying biblical truth to everyday life. My name is Derek Brown. I’m here today with Cliff McManis, and we are both pastors and elders at Creekside Bible Church in Cupertino, California, and professors of theology at the Cornerstone Bible College and Seminary in Vallejo, California. And today we want to continue our conversation on eldership, and in the past three episodes we’ve talked about the necessity of having a plurality of elders at your church, the wisdom behind that, the biblical clarity on the topic, and why some people resist it. And now we want to talk specifically about qualifications for elders. This is an important role. It is a crucial role for the health of the church, and you can’t just have anybody doing it. Unfortunately, I think the church in many places has lost their way on this. They don’t see the importance of it. A lot of Christians don’t see the importance of having qualified elders, or they may not even know what the qualifications are or the kind of pastors they should be looking for. And so we want to help inform that. We want to help uphold this high standard that God has laid out in His Word, because it really is for our blessing as a church to have qualified elders. And in fact, one of my favorite theologians, Jonathan Edwards, he even said that having a godly, gifted man in your presence to serve as a leader and a shepherd is one of God’s greatest gifts to the church. And I think he’s right. It truly is. And we don’t want just one man. The model is that we have a plurality of men who can do that. And so we want to make sure that we’re qualified and that those who are filling these roles are qualified as well. We need to talk about these qualifications. So I’m excited to do this. As a pastor myself, I think this will be a great exercise to just think through these again, afresh. I think pastors should be regularly meditating on their qualifications and making sure that they’re maintaining a walk with the Lord that is holy, that it’s humble, and that they’re following through with these various character qualifications. So Cliff, I want to hand it over to you to take it away and let us know what thoughts are on your mind concerning the qualifications for elders.
Cliff: Yeah, I want to walk through, and I would encourage those listening maybe to have your Bible handy and open up your Bible. Have your finger in 1 Timothy 3. We’ll start there and then we’ll go to Titus chapter 1 that lists the qualifications before I actually go item by item through the meaning of the qualification. Just got some preliminary comments on qualifications. The first of which is, I can’t tell you, Derek, how many folks over the years I’ve run into who feared or stayed away from churches that had a plurality of the elders.
Derek: Deliberately stayed away from churches that had a plurality.
Cliff: Yeah, including our church and their story. And I’ve heard this more than on one occasion, that they had a bad experience at a previous church that had a plurality of elders. And as they tell the story and go through the details, I’m thinking, yeah, boy, that sounds terrible because the plurality of elders were lording it over or controlling or spiritually abusive or whatever. And I’m just going on their testimony, but we’ve seen that, well, that could be true. You might have a church with a plurality of elders and they’re not treating the sheep right. They’re usurping God’s authority, abusing their authority, whatever. And the problem is, they’re attributing the bad church to the fact that it’s got a plurality of elders instead of concluding that there were elders there who weren’t qualified to be elders.
Derek: Yeah, important distinction to make.
Cliff: Yeah. And therefore, they throw the baby out with the bath water and say, I don’t want to go to a church that has a plurality of elders anymore because the plurality of elders is the problem. It’s the lack of qualified elders was the problem. That’s why God puts the qualifications in place as a safeguard to protect the people from unqualified men or church leaders abusing the sheep and abusing power in the church. So if you’ve got that experience, you’ve got a bad taste in your mouth of a church you’ve been at where there were one, two, or a plurality of unqualified elders, think that through. Make sure you’re not getting rid of the biblical model.
Derek: Right. You know, this happens a lot, actually. People will blame the system, I don’t want to call it a system, but say, just take something like Calvinism or complementarianism, they’ll have a bad experience where that was the conviction. The church was strong in God’s providence and God’s sovereignty and believe in those things or complementarianism, and they had a bad experience there for whatever reason, whatever happened. And then they conclude that it was due to Calvinism or it was due to complementarianism, and therefore they reject those things now when they need to make a careful distinction between what is taught biblically and sinful people who may be abusing their role or who are carrying out those convictions wrongly, and we need to be thinking carefully at this point.
Cliff: Yeah, we can’t overgeneralize. That would be a logical fallacy of guilt by association. So if that’s your background, listen to what God has to say in His Word about qualifications and why it is so important. Before I get to those, just let me run through these quickly introductory comments regarding the qualifications. Like I said, the qualifications mainly are listed in 1 Timothy 3 by the Apostle Paul and also in Titus chapter 1. Those two epistles, the pastoral epistles, written kind of about the same time in Paul’s ministry, the last decade of his ministry, probably in the 60s A.D., maybe five years or so before he died. God gave these qualifications through the Apostle Paul to be written down, preserved for the church. So 2,000 years later we have these, we should live by these. Comments I have about the qualifications. Number one, the emphasis in the qualifications given is not on the function, the role, or the duty of the pastor or elder, but the emphasis in the qualification is on the character of the man, his moral character and his spiritual character. A couple of them will intersect with his function like teaching, but for the most part it’s his character that matters. That’s so important. There are 22 divine qualifications. Some might have a different number. For example, I have 22, some might say 23, and we’ll explain why that’s different because I think the first one in 1 Timothy 3 talks about having a desire to be a pastor. That can be a qualification, I think. And if you add that as a qualification, then we’ve got 23 qualifications, 23 divine, God given, biblical qualifications for a man to be considered, whether he’s legitimately serving as an elder, pastor, or bishop in the local church, 22 God given qualifications.
Derek: That is intimidating.
Cliff: It is. And in light of God giving 22 divine qualifications, I would first say that qualifications are not unheard of in Scripture for God’s leaders in his spiritual community. In the Old Testament, God gave some qualifications for Moses’ helpers. Even the first elders had qualifications. They definitely had to be spiritual men. So you had qualifications for priests in the Old Testament, very specific ones, and several qualifications. In the New Testament, there were qualifications for Jesus’ 12 apostles. There were qualifications for the first quasi-deacons in Acts chapter 6. So having qualifications is not unprecedented. That’s actually the biblical model for leadership in God’s church. In light of the fact that God gave 22 divine qualifications, we don’t need to add to that. God knows what he’s doing. We don’t need 27. But people do that. Derek, you and I have served at churches where they had man-made qualifications given in addition to biblical ones.
Derek: Namely is a good corporate leader or a good entrepreneur.
Cliff: I think that’s the most common one. He’s a good businessman.
Derek: Good businessman.
Cliff: Or he’s rich and has a lot of money. He gives a lot of money to the church. He’s qualified. I’ve seen that one.
Derek: Yeah. And that bleeds over from the whole kind of trustee model where you have wealthy donors who are then selected to be trustees of institutions and it’s not a biblical qualification.
Cliff: I was an elder at a church years ago, not this church. I was the young guy and I was the new elder. And one of the old guy elders, they had seven elders, and he’d been an elder for like 20 years. And he was proud of his church because he said, yeah, we have higher standards at our church for elders than other churches do. And his example was, yeah, you can’t be an elder at our church until you’ve been here at least 15 years and proven yourself. That’s what he told me. I’m like, wow, that is not in the Bible. That is a man-made, but he was proud of it. That is so typical. God’s 22 qualifications aren’t enough. We’ve got to make up our own. Another man-made qualification is pretty common. We ran into this in just about every pastor’s conference I’ve done at places is where they have elders, they serve terms. You serve a three-year term. And then you got to be voted by the people and you can do another three-year term. And after you serve your six years, you’re done. You’re not qualified anymore to be an elder.
Derek: Wow.
Cliff: Yeah. After six years.
Derek: Yeah. So that’s a man-made qualification or restriction. There are no term limits in the Bible.
Cliff: There are no term limits in the Bible, at least man-made term limits. It’s God’s limits that would make you unqualified, but you’re right, not man-made term limits. Then on the flip side of this, 22 divine qualifications, we don’t need 20 or more than 22. The flip side is we shouldn’t be neglecting God’s 22 qualifications. And that happens all the time, too, where people are becoming, I know guys who have appointed themselves to become an elder.
Derek: Well, that’s dangerous. Yeah.
Cliff: I’m like, how did you do that? Who was your ordination committee? How did you? That’s a problem. Because they didn’t do that. They started, you know, like planting churches these days is a lot, at least where we live in the Silicon Valley, it’s like you do a startup business, well, there are people doing startup churches from scratch, just reading off the internet how to do it. And they don’t even take into consideration the qualifications of the man of God. And it’s just, poof, they appear, there’s a church and all of a sudden there are pastors and elders and they didn’t go through a qualification process.
Derek: Oh boy.
Cliff: Yeah. They have neglected God’s standard requirements, very common. So we can’t add to it and we can’t neglect the 22. Other key, when we’re reading these passages in Timothy and Titus, as we’re looking at the qualifications, is the verbs being used during the present tense, which is, the implications of that are profound.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: Examining a man now, based on his life, and not 15, 20 years ago, because I’ve seen this happen at churches I’ve been at where maybe a guy got divorced 20 years ago, I mean, literally I know of a guy who got divorced 20 plus years ago, he wasn’t even a Christian. Got divorced, then he got saved, and then he married a Christian woman. And then he’s grown and mature over the course of a decade or more, but the church says, no, you’re not qualified to be an elder because you got divorced 20 years ago. So they’re putting the emphasis on what happened 20 years ago, or the past. All the verbs in these qualifications are present tense. What is this man like now? What is this pattern of behavior now? So that’s a practical one to consider as we’re assessing his profile now. Then also, these qualifications are for elders and bishops. They’re the same because we’ve already established that point that elders are bishops. The point of emphasis in these qualifications, because Derek, you said at the outset that while that’s kind of intimidating, 22, the point of emphasis, I think, is it’s not perfection, but direction of his life.
Derek: Yeah, that’s a helpful phrase.
Cliff: The direction of his life. And also, the man of God, he does need to be a model to the congregation. I mean, Paul says that to Timothy in the book of Timothy, be thou an example to the flock. So yeah, there’s 22 qualifications, meaning the man of God or pastor, he has to be well rounded in every essential area of ministry, and he is called to be an example or model. He can’t be deficient in certain areas. So yeah, it is intimidating, but it’s the direction of your life and not the perfection of your life. And the fact that you are qualified, that’s the question, can a man really be qualified in these 22 different areas? Yeah, I think so, because again, God’s not saying you have to be perfect or sinless, but it’s the pattern of your life in these various areas. And if you are qualified in those 22 areas, then it is a sign of maturity, and that’s what elder means. You’re a spiritually mature one. You’re mature in all these areas, you have a well-balanced life. So it is possible to be qualified, not perfect, but qualified in these other areas. The flip side of that is, I’ve heard several sermons by pastors who, and just Bible teachers, who water down the qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 by saying, well, the truth is, every Christian needs to aspire to these qualifications, and every Christian should be held to this standard. In other words, they’re saying that every Christian should be qualified in all 22 areas.
Derek: Yeah, sorry, go ahead. I’m interested.
Cliff: Well, I want to get your thought on that, because then on the one hand, you’re watering down the qualification for what it means to be an elder, and then you’re unrealistically trying to raise everybody immediately to the level of all 22 areas of spiritual maturity that take decades for certain men to get to, and also being an elder or a pastor is a spiritual gift that not every Christian has. You can’t expect every Christian to meet all 22 qualifications, because not every Christian has the gift of pastor.
Derek: Right.
Cliff: But I’ve seen it done.
Derek: Yeah, that’s an interesting reality, because the qualifications that are listed, those are things that Christians should be aiming for. I wouldn’t disagree with that. The character qualities and discipline and holiness, and for men to be a one-woman man and to be walking in humility and hospitality, like those are all things that people, Christians should be striving after. But to claim that in such a way that it almost, like you said, waters down the qualification that a man must meet in order to be an elder, I think that’s where things get a little confusing. On the one hand, I do recognize, yes, encourage Christians to pursue these things, but at the same time recognize that an elder is someone who has the gift of eldership, who’s been set apart by God and qualified in these ways. And so we want to not confuse that. I think that’s a helpful point to make.
Cliff: Yeah, I was a pastor and a member of a Baptist church, and in the bylaws, because they had membership, and it said, qualifications to become a member, and it listed 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. It just listed the 22 qualifications as a member. And not every one of the 22 qualifications is intended for every member, because one of them is that you have to be able to teach, and then James 3 says not everyone should be teaching.
Derek: Exactly.
Cliff: So that’s just a couple examples. So don’t water it down. Don’t add to it. Another one is you can grow into these qualifications. So maybe you’re not qualified to be an elder right now, but maybe in five years you are. And it’s something to work to, aspire to. Maybe you need training and more exposure in certain areas. That’s fine.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: We do that all the time.
Derek: Because we’re training. It’s important to remember that, too, because just because you presently are not qualified doesn’t mean that… But you have a desire to be an elder, but you’re presently not. It doesn’t mean you can’t be. In fact, the fact that you have a desire may be a good sign. You want to have qualified men around you, being able to accurately assess you and evaluate you and determine these things. But just because you aren’t presently qualified doesn’t mean that you can’t be in the future. That should be an encouragement to the guys that are listening who have a desire.
Cliff: Yeah, absolutely. Because you and I as elders at our church, we train, raise up other elders, and we’ve had candidates who desire to be an elder, and we had to tell them, well, we need to slow down because you’re just not there yet. We need more time, more training, more experience, more exposure. Early on in my 20s, my wife told me point blank, you’re not qualified to be an elder, so slow down. You’re not ready yet. So it was in my 30s, not in my 20s.
Derek: And same here. I remember, well, I’ve been ministering with you for many years, but even when we came out here after seminary, I had my MDiv, my PhD, had some full-time ministry experience, a fair amount of it under my belt, about almost five years’ worth of it. And I wasn’t just deemed an elder when I stepped out here, and I was 35 years old. And I remember even kind of thinking, Wayne, I’m 35 years old. I’ve got these degrees. I’ve got the experience. And I’m so glad that we slowed it down. And I had not only multiple years in seminary then, but time out here as well. And it’s just healthy. That’s why so many of the illustrations in Scripture regarding spiritual growth are agricultural, because fruit takes time, and you can’t rush it if you want it to be healthy.
Cliff: Good point. So you can grow into the qualifications, but once you do become qualified as an elder, you can become disqualified. So we need to remember that side as well.
Derek: Yeah. Good point.
Cliff: You become an elder, you’re not an elder for life. You’re not a U.S. Supreme Court justice who can never get fired. Can you think of a verse, Derek, where Paul talks about… Because he was an elder, and he’s apostle, but served as an elder, where he actually believed he could become disqualified.
Derek: Yeah. So I would say that in 1 Corinthians 9, where he’s talking about disciplining his body so that he would not become disqualified.
Cliff: Yep. And do you think that’s disqualified from ministry or serving in that capacity? Because I think it is.
Derek: Oh, in that context? Yeah. There are people saying, oh, that’s not talking about ministry.
Cliff: I’m thinking, well, no, that’s what he’s talking about.
Derek: The context is definitely doing ministry.
Cliff: Yeah, in the context, yeah. And he believed. He knew himself. He didn’t trust himself. And he had to put his body into submission and beat it, because he knew he was vulnerable. He could become disqualified as a minister. And we need to think the same way. Another point, churches should actually use these qualifications for their elders, their pastors, and use them specifically in the training process.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: They should actually use them. That’s what they’re for. A lot of churches don’t, but no, God gave them to it. And that’s what we do. We train our elders, and when we think a guy is ready, first step actually is having him read the 22 qualifications, understand what they mean, and then just vet, you know, put his life through the standard of those 22 qualifications. So he does some self-reflection. Are you qualified? Do you think you’re qualified in those 22 areas? And if he comes back and says, yeah, I think I am, if he’s married, the next thing I do is then sit down with your wife and ask her one by one, because she knows you better than anybody. And then if your wife says, okay, then let’s keep talking. And then we’ll see if the elders think you are. And then we’ll see if the church body of people who know you think you are. That’s literally what we do. We use that as the standard for our elders at our church. And one of the last steps is letting our members look at the prospective candidate that we say, we think this guy’s qualified. What do you, the members, think? And here are the 22 qualifications. And they give us feedback.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: A lot of how much they know the brother. Very helpful. And then lastly, these 22 qualifications, I put them into four basic categories. They’re asking, is a man qualified in his personal, private walk with God? Is a man qualified with respect to his family? So they’re kind of concentric circles. The first one is the most intimate. Are you qualified in your walk with God at the deepest, most private, personal level? I’d even say in your thought life. And when you spend time alone by yourself, what are you doing? Because God sees you, even if anybody else doesn’t. So there’s your walk with God. That’s the first little intimate circle. Then there’s, are you qualified with respect to your family? And then third circle is, are you qualified with respect to the church’s opinion? Because they get to weigh in on this. They observe your life. And then the fourth circle is, are you qualified with respect to those outside the church, is the word he uses. Outsiders, that could be your neighbors. That’s just the world or unbelievers at large who have some kind of interface with you on a regular basis. Or they can make an assessment that, yeah, you’re not a total hypocrite. Maybe it’s the IRS and you pay your taxes and you’re faithful in doing that. But so that’s good to remember those four categories by which, so it’s not just a one-dimensional superficial assessment. This is getting pretty much everybody’s opinion.
Derek: Yeah. Demonstrating well-roundedness. That’s a phrase you’ve already used, the well-roundedness. Just asking a person about their personal walk. Well, they might think too highly of their personal walk with the Lord. Or you ask them about their character and they might have some blind spots. So you get these other perspectives and that’s just a really helpful to get an accurate evaluation of the man.
Cliff: Yeah. We’ve trained elders or had elders or wanted to be elders who thought they were qualified. And we had to tell them, well, we don’t think so. There’s some weak spots, like you said, that blind spot. Well, I’ll start walking through the qualifications. Okay. We’ll define these. So if you have your Bible open to 1 Timothy 3, I’ll just start there. I’m using the New American Standard and the problem with these words, these 22 words that Paul gives, they’re very specific. Some of them are used very few times in the New Testament. Some of these words are used only one time. And so you’ve got the New American Standard translated in one way, and then you might find the ESV or the New King James or the King James translating the same word in a different manner. So I’ll help as I just go through, but I’m using the New American Standard. So qualification number one, I’m calling it a qualification, is 1 Timothy 3:. The qualification is desire. Do you desire to be a pastor or elder? Paul uses two different words in that respect in verse one. It’s a trustworthy statement. If any man or anyone, literally anyone, but it refers to a man, if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. So the word aspire and desire, those are two similar words used in that one verse, and that’s where it starts. And that’s self-examination. That’s kind of a subjective qualification. And that’s where you need to begin, is as you go to God and pray and what’s the desire of your heart? Because we believe if you’re truly called or gifted to be a pastor, it’s God who puts that desire in your heart.
Derek: Yeah. And it’s a necessary but not sufficient requirement in that you don’t want someone who doesn’t have a desire because then they’re doing it under compulsion and Peter says, you can’t do that. But also at the same time, someone can have a desire and you have to say, well, but you’re not qualified, objectively speaking, you know, speaking from the outside. So it’s a necessary but not sufficient. So starting with that desire, you don’t want someone who’s you’re saying, oh, you should serve as an elder. Well, I don’t want to, but you should, but I don’t want to. That would be under compulsion.
Cliff: Yeah, that’s a great point. Necessary but not sufficient. The word there for aspire to the office literally means to seek or to stretch oneself out after. So it’s very deliberate, very personal, straining after it. So it’s a strong desire.
Derek: Yeah, it is. That’s graphic.
Cliff: And then Paul says, this is a good thing. This is not an illegitimate desire. It’s a good thing. A good desire to do that.
Derek: So you’re telling me that someone can aspire and desire to lead God’s people and do that from pure, good, wholesome motives that aren’t coming from pride.
Cliff: Absolutely. One commentator calls it a holy desire. That is awesome.
Derek: Yep. Can I make one comment?
Cliff: Yeah.
Derek: Because you touched on it, but just given where we are at today and I’m just getting, I get barraged by it constantly in my newsfeed and the books that are being recommended and the blogs I read and on and on and on. This can only be a man. Only a man can be an elder, correct?
Cliff: That is correct.
Derek: That is challenged by professing evangelicals today pretty strongly. And I should say some professing evangelicals pretty strongly that this is not restricted to men. Some people say it’s not clear. And I think I want to say it’s clear.
Cliff: This is very clear. We’re going to see that in the qualifications, chapter three, verse two of Timothy. It’s not too early to chime in because you’re going to see the personal pronouns being used throughout 1 Timothy 3 and Titus are singular masculine.
Derek: Yeah.
Cliff: And for good reason. It’s clear.
Derek: That’s right. And tying it back to something we talked about in the last episode that there are, in fact, it’s common that the office of pastor and elder are split into two so that they’re two different things. You can have pastors who are not elders and elders who are not pastors. And we would argue biblically that if you’re a pastor and elder, you’re an overseer, three different names for one office. And the way that some folks get around this idea of women not being elders that they’ll agree, okay, women can’t be elders, but they can be pastors because they’re two different things. And we would say, no, if a woman is calling herself a pastor, she’s calling herself an elder and she cannot be an elder, therefore she cannot be a pastor. So this is reserved for men. And we can talk more about that later. But I just, I want to say that now because of how often I’m having to deal with it and see it happening a lot just in evangelicalism.
Cliff: Yeah. That is so important. Marilyn Hickey was a pastor at the Happy Church in Denver for 40 years. She was the main preaching minister, Marilyn Hickey. And she would routinely say, I’m not an elder, my husband is one of the elders of the church, but I’m a pastor. So she made that false distinction so that she could violate scripture. Good point. Going back to that aspiring, it’s got to come from, it’s a desire hopefully that God has put on your heart through the Spirit of God after you’ve been saving. And yes, you have to be a man. This is important where we train pastors in India because where we go in India is we’re working with now hundreds of pastors there. It is not uncommon for these small village Indian churches with these pastors of small churches where they only have one pastor in each church. They know they need a plurality, but they only have one for whatever reason. Then when the pastor dies suddenly, it’s not uncommon for his wife to take over as the pastor.
Derek: Really?
Cliff: Yes. Or his son if he’s old enough. So we dealt with that when we were in India. And so the 16, 17 year old son is expected to be the pastor because his dad died and he does not have the desire. He’s being forced to do it out of, like you said, 1 Peter 5 of compulsion. That is not right.
Derek: That is, wow. Very dangerous. I was not aware of that. That is, that’s sad. That’s, boy, so many spiritual dangers there for him and for the congregation.
Cliff: Yeah. That’s why if you have elders at your church and you ask one of the elders, do you want to continue being an elder? And he says, no, then you should let him go. You’re not obligated. As a matter of fact, it’s dangerous for you to continue on. So, qualification number one, the inner desire that we believe God put there. Number two is a general qualification. New American Standard says you must be above reproach. It is a trustworthy statement. If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it’s a fine work he desires to do. Verse two, an overseer or bishop then must be above reproach. Qualification number two, and that is translated, the new King James is blameless, but the synonym being above reproach. It’s a compound word used by Paul and it just simply means not publicly guilty of a crime, can’t be accused of anything in a court of law, nothing overtly obvious in his life that finds him guilty or worthy of censure that he can be accused of. So, he’s above reproach. That’s a categorical umbrella term. It needs to be true. Qualification number three, this is in 1 Timothy 3:2, but also in Titus 1:6. So, it’s repeated in both chapters, and that is he must be the husband of one wife, the husband of one. The Greek text literally says, one womaned man. And the word for man, there is not anthropos, the generic term of humanity. It’s andra, which means male and only male. So, here’s your explicit qualification that an elder pastor bishop must be male and man and cannot be a woman. And the phraseology, even though the New American Standard doesn’t say, the New American Standard says husband of one wife, the literal Greek translation says a one woman man, which I think is preferable. Sure. A one woman man because not only he has to have a, if he is married monogamous, he can’t be a polygamist or a bigamist married to more than one wife. But the fact that it’s one, the emphasis is on the one, one woman. He’s committed to only one woman, which is also could be true if you have an elder who is single and not married. And maybe he’s dating or looking to be married. He can’t be dating three women at the same time if he’s an elder. He has to be focused.
Derek: That’s right. One woman.
Cliff: And even if, is it possible to be married to one woman and violate this, Derek, and not be a one woman man?
Derek: Yeah, so some folks might say, well, this means never committing adultery. And of course it includes that. But you can be a man who has never committed physical adultery, but who is addicted to pornography or who flirts with all the women and has inappropriate, maybe not sexual, but inappropriate relationships with women at the church or other women that he knows around the community. And so you can be not a one woman man by things other than physical adultery. So this is having a focus on your wife. She’s the only woman for you. You only have eyes for her, to use the expression. Your heart is devoted to her. And that’s not to say that there won’t be temptations to lust or whatever, but it’s you’re regularly putting those sins to death and you are, because you love your wife, you’re committed to loving her as Christ loved the church and you only have eyes for her and you treat her differently than you treat any other woman. And you’re not rude to other women, but no other woman receives the kind of affection that you show your wife. She is exclusive to you and the affection you show her is exclusive to her. And so that’s what it means to be a one woman man. It’s not just, oh, he hasn’t committed adultery. It’s more than that. I think that’s the genius of Paul using that phrase actually, one woman man.
Cliff: I agree. The phraseology just accentuates the fact that, like you said, this is exclusive one-track mind towards the loyalty of the woman God has given you. So it’s not just external, it’s also internal thoughts you have about other women. Are excluded, but solely for your wife. This is hugely important. This also plays into sexual purity in terms of all the qualifications listed here. Very important one. So I’m going to stop there, Derek, our first three qualifications and leave the others to our next episode.
Derek: Excellent. We will come back with the rest of those qualifications in the next episode. As Cliff has just said, you can check out the other episodes at withallwisdom.org and until next time, keep seeking the Lord and his word.
