Featured A pastor’s qualifications:

People are stating it does, in a round about way, imo...


Every sin, past, present and future are blotted out by the blood. Christ took them in His flesh and condemned them. They are to never be brought before them ever again...seeing their Scapegoat took them into the wilderness...


Yet, people want the lost to live according to the bible, and they can't. If someone has been married 100 times in their sinner days, the very act of adultery has been blotted out.

 

--Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to a command of God our Saviour, and of the Lord Jesus Christ our hope, to Timotheus -- genuine child in faith: Grace, kindness, peace, from God our Father, and Christ Jesus our Lord,(1 Timothy 1:1,2)


The book of 1 Timothy is addressed to Timothy and Paul instructing him in how to be a pastor and how to lead his flock. It is addressed to the church.


--Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of the choice ones of God, and an acknowledging of truth that [is] according to piety, upon hope of life age-during, which God, who doth not lie, did promise before times of ages, (and He manifested in proper times His word,) in preaching, which I was entrusted with, according to a charge of God our Saviour, to Titus -- true child according to a common faith: Grace, kindness, peace, from God the Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour!



The book of Titus is Paul instructing Titus in much the same way he did Timothy. These two books, like the other 64 books in the bible, are directed to the church, the sheep, the bride of the Lamb, the body of Christ, the elect of God, et al.

 

The book of Titus specifically states that Titus was to ordain elders, and then goes on to list those same qualifications that were identified in 1 Timothy 3.

 

The book of Titus specifically states that Titus was to ordain elders, and then goes on to list those same qualifications that were identified in 1 Timothy 3. To imply that these qualifications were instructions only to Timothy and Titus is incorrect.

 

I stated these two books, along with the other 64, were all addressed to the church, and not the lost. Ordaining those who had been saved. The bible doesn't take affect on anyone until they are saved. Romans 8:7 and 1 Corinthians 2:14 are good starting points, Brother Don.

 

These three books: First and Second Timothy, and the book of Titus are called Pastoral Epistles. They are full of instructions for pastors to keep order in the church including the ordaining of deacons and elders/pastors. The qualifications are clearly given. Your opinion on what has been done in the past is irrelevant. It doesn't change the qualifications.
Sins may be forgiven but the consequences of many sins will remain forever.
Criminal records for some remain.
Broken bodies and/or limbs remain for others in accidents.
Broken relationships remain.
We can't undo the past. It may be forgiven, but the past remains and it is a part of our history that does not get swept under the rug or buried in the deepest sea. It is there for everyone to see. That is why the first qualification of a pastor is:
that he be found blameless.
--One, who in the past, has been in and out of relationships is not blameless. Marriage is a very sacred covenant in the eyes of God.

 

I might add that that the term "blameless" does not mean sinless but refers to the inability of an opponent in a wrestling match to find any firm grasp on his opponent in order to pin him down to the ground. No skeletons in his closet.

Secondly, the whole idea of these qualifications is to set forth the PROPER EXAMPLE for others to follow. Divorce and remarriage is NEVER the PROPER EXAMPLE to follow. We all know what the PROPER EXAMPLE is as divorce is not pleasing in God's sight because it is due to sin and never to PROPER EXAMPLE of what a marriage should be.

 

:thumbs::thumbs:

 

You're so stuck on "past sins" that you're overlooking what the job of a pastor is. The pastor is the under-shepherd; the man hired to watch the flock, take care of them, lead them and keep them from going astray, find them when they get separated, etc. That's the analogy. In the case of us poor, miserable, sinful humans, the pastor also teaches and guides and "trains up."

I agree that sins before, and confessed sins after, salvation are forgiven. What would you have a previously divorced pastor--whether divorced before or after salvation--teach and guide the flock he's been entrusted with about the subject of divorce?

And I continue to go back to my question that no one has answered: When you preach/teach this subject, how do you reconcile wife of one husband in 1Tim 5 with husband of one wife in 1 Tim 3?

 

Just curious, Don, and maybe you can point me back to an original post that I might've overlooked that had the question fully fleshed out, but why do you think the two instances need to be "reconciled?"

Are they at odds?

The requirement of a pastor to be the "husband of one wife" is, in essence, to show a type and shadow of Christ as the husband of the bride church. It shows a devotion to a single spouse that is unwavering.

Likewise, stating the "wife of one husband" requirement on the widows shows similar devotion; devotion that likely extends into other avenues of that person's life. Paul does go on to clarify that it is often the younger widows who will turn back to sin and seek remarriage. These older widows can be seen as providers of an example to the younger.

 

The pastor of any church is the same as any other person who came to Christ for salvation, lost as a ball in the weeds. Look @ the Corinthian church, and read chapter six....


"have ye not known that the unrighteous the reign of God shall not inherit? be not led astray; neither whoremongers, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, the reign of God shall inherit. And certain of you were these! but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were declared righteous, in the name of the Lord Jesus, and in the Spirit of our God."(vss 9-11 YLT)


There were people who had been idol worshippers...there were people there who had stolen off other people, there were former g@ys, covetous people, drunks, who had been saved. Yet, for some odd reason, divorce and remarriage makes someone a second-class citizen in churches.

As Sissy Ann already stated, a pastor who has been divorced and remarried can teach others by showing the mistakes he made in his previous marriage(s). Now, I am talking about pastors who had been divorced and remarried prior to being saved. God doesn't throw people's past sins up in their faces, but by golly, some church members do. That's why I stated God's forgiveness goes waaaaaay further than man's does.

Well, let us go to 1 Corinthians 7 and see what Paul says about this...


"And to the rest I speak -- not the Lord -- if any brother hath a wife unbelieving, and she is pleased to dwell with him, let him not send her away; and a woman who hath a husband unbelieving, and he is pleased to dwell with her, let her not send him away; for the unbelieving husband hath been sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife hath been sanctified in the husband; otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. And, if the unbelieving doth separate himself -- let him separate himself: the brother or the sister is not under servitude in such [cases], and in peace hath God called us;"


If a christian man has a wife who leaves him, she was the one who broke that covenant of marriage, not him. You're gonna hold him for the misgivings of another woman's deeds. There is a Brother in the association I belong to, that when they married, they were both sinners, iirc. Later on he was saved, and she was later on "saved". Over time, as this is what he told me, his wife at that time wasn't bringing forth good fruit. He was even an asst-pastor at one time. One day she came up to him and told him she wasn't a preacher's wife and left him. I know this man personally, and I even had him preach over my mommy the second night of her wake. He's as good a man as I know, imo. To lay the charges of a failed marriage on him is down right uncalled for. She left him, and in doing so, according to 1 Corinthians 7, he had every right to remarry and maintain his asst-pastorship. But the churches he was in at that time, would have yanked his credentials thisquick, so he left before his divorce was finalized, iirc.


When a man enters into a marriage, he enters into a covenant with her and God. I do not deny this. Yet, in his sinner days, if he's maried 10 times, the one he is married to when he is saved, is his wife in the eyes of the Lord. If he were to divorce her based solely on the fact the church doesn't want him as a preacher and/or pastor, would have him committing another sin in divorcing her. I am not saying you're advocating that, but people look behind someone's conversion when God does not.


Come, I pray you, and we reason, saith Jehovah, If your sins are as scarlet, as snow they shall be white, If they are red as crimson, as wool they shall be!(Isaiah 1:18 YLT)


ALL of our sin are blotted out, never to be brought back before us ever again...at least not by God. Man will, as evidenced by this thread.........

 

You're wasting your time, Sissy Ann. You'd just as well go out and howl @ the moon. They're so set in their ways...they have the "hand me down" theology their grannies and pas held to....


BTW, I was raised to believe men had no right to preach. I was raised in a non-christian home, but we knew about the Triune God. But what dad told us was what he was raised to believe. When he began reading for himself, he found out he was wrong.

 

No, and it doesn't make them pastors either. Paul wasn't putting forth these people as pastors, was he?

So can serial rapists and child molesters do the same thing according to your logic?
God doesn't throw past sins back in one's face as you put it. But one doesn't re-write history either. The consequences of our sin remain forever. A bishop (elder/pastor) must be found blameless. People with criminal records, and those with immoral backgrounds cannot stand in front of their congregations as blameless.
How can a divorced person (much less one who has been divorced and remarried) give good counsel for a couple seeking to be married, or a couple seeking marriage counsel. He can't. He would be a hypocrite. Honestly, would you go to a person who has been divorced three times for counsel about your marriage??

Go back and read the passage. There is not one word of anything about divorce in there. You are reading your own interpretation into a passage that doesn't teach divorce, where Paul is against divorce. The Bible doesn't contradict itself, but you are contradicting the Bible by the way you are interpreting such scriptures.

I don't hold anybody responsible for anything. God's Word and the Lord himself holds people responsible. One doesn't enter into marriage lightly or with their eyes closed. You don't wake up the next morning and say: "Whoops, I made a mistake!"
You just made a vow before men and before God: "Til death do us part."
God has some very strong words about vows.

Forgiven and consequence are two different things.
I personally know of NO church that would hire a man who has been married 10 times before--saved or not. Do you honestly think the church is going to set that behind them just because the Lord has "forgiven him?" I trust not! It shows a pattern of behavior. And not everything changes the day a person is saved.

Sins are blotted out, yes, I agree.
The history isn't.
The consequences aren't.
And the qualifications for a pastor remain just the same way that Paul, through the pen of the Holy Spirit wrote them in the first century.