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NASB | 1 Timothy 3:2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | 1 Timothy 3:2 Now an overseer must be blameless and beyond reproach, the husband of one wife, self-controlled, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, |
Subject: standards for a preacher/biship |
Bible Note: Paul obviously had the authority of an elder in the congregation. But he also held a position of apostleship, one that was only given to the 12 apostles and him. ((1Co 9:1, 2; 15:9, 10; 2Co 12:12; 2Ti 1:1, 11; Ro 1:1; 11:13; Ac 19:5, 6) In order to justify that he was indeed an apostle to some that were complaining and bickering against him, perhaps some out of jealousy, and others in order to draw away people after themselves, he says in 1 Corinthians 9:1, 2: "Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not YOU my work in [the] Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, I most certainly am to YOU, for YOU are the seal confirming my apostleship in relation to [the] Lord." That he had special privleges as an apostle, "to the nations," that is he had been assigned to preach to the gentiles, while Peter was assigned to preach to the Jews, he says that he could have become a "burden" to the brothers, that is required that they supported his preaching activities as an active minister of the congregation, but instead he rather tried to furnish his own expensives in his preaching work, supporting himself as a tent maker: "For YOU yourselves know the way YOU ought to imitate us, because we did not behave disorderly among YOU 8 nor did we eat food from anyone free. To the contrary, by labor and toil night and day we were working so as not to impose an expensive burden upon any one of YOU. 9 Not that we do not have authority, but in order that we might offer ourselves as an example to YOU to imitate us." - 2 Thessalonias 3:7-9. That he served in a position of oversight is also seen in the letters that he wrote to the congregations. He set matters straight about many things, and even to the congregation in Corinth that he helped found, he judged a man who had been sleeping with the wife of his father as being unfit to stay in the congregation and told the brothers there to throw him out, or shun him from the congregation, and the woman he was with. (1 Corinthians 5:1-5.) |