JD: David, the Apostle Paul gave some very explicit guidelines to both Timothy and Titus concerning the qualifications that must be met by church leaders, lets go into that a moment.
DJ: We find this first in I Timothy chapter 3 and let me just quickly read that. A Bishop, and the word there is a Pisca Paus where we get the English for Bishop. A Bishop must be blameless, a husband of one wife, temperate, civil minded, good behavior, hospitable, able to teach, not given to wine, not violent, not greedy for money, gentle, not quarrelsome, not conveyance, and one who rules his own house well, having his children in submissions. It seems that most if not all of the early church leaders were married and the idea was that they needed to be mature men who had demonstrated that they could handle their own personal life as well as their homes well and have a good relationship with their wife in order to rule the house of God well, the Church of God.
JD: You know all of these instructions that we’ve been talking about there in Timothy and Titus concern male leadership in the church. But there is a push today by many for women to be in these positions as pastors and teachers and with some even saying that Paul’s instructions were just for the church in the first century. What about that?
DJ: Paul says that he does not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man but she should learn in a submissive way. And to be a follower you need to be trusting and if you’re trusting that opens you up to deception and that’s what happened with Eve.
It also talked about that Adam was created first and he also
eluded to that in I Corinthians 11 that just as Jesus is submitted to the
father it’s not a matter of him not being equal it’s a matter of the way God
has ordered things; the same thing is true in the relationship between men and
women in the church.
JD: David James with a Biblical understanding of the role for
men and women in the church today.
We report this information because it is setting the stage
for Bible Prophecy to be fulfilled.
Jesus Christ in his letter to the church in Thyatira in Asia
Minor wrote to make certain they were staying Biblical in the leadership and
the teaching ministry of the local church.
There is no question of God’s plan for leadership of the
local church both for men and women and especially in the area of teaching the congregants.
This letter is not only to the church in Thyatira but to all churches then and
now. The letter is recorded in Revelation 2:18-29. In fact, all 7 letters that
Jesus wrote to the 7 local churches in Asia Minor, which is modern day Turkey, are
so practical these letters will actually help us to know how to live in this
world until Jesus Christ does come back for the rapture of the church.
