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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, |
Bible Question:
Hank my brother again forgive me for appearing to be so much like a donkey. Your answer “the consensus among wiser men than me says thus and such.” Yet when I used that same rebuttal point in another thread I was told we can’t do that we have to go by what the Bible says. I’m trying to show a double standard here, one place we say we must go by the Bible literally and others we say we yield to wiser men. Look at the message we are giving the world, here this verse and this verse has to be taken literally. However this verse and this verse can’t be. What does the world really see? Doesn’t it see the church living by laws they are comfortable with yet condemning the world for living by laws it is comfortable with. I have always held this passage by the interpretation you just gave. I had formed that interpretation not by what I had read in the Bible but rather by what I had been taught. However after reading what Steve had said, I noticed God had gone out of his way to mention husband and wife rather than saying sexually pure or abstained from immorality, and I began to wonder why. Doesn't that even make you wonder? |
Bible Answer: No, EdB, it doesn't make me wonder, simply because the passage "literally" doesn't say what you and Steve seem to want it to say. Ed, when you or I seem to see in a passage what dedicated Bible scholars have failed to see for 2,000 years, isn't it just possible that we need to re-examine our interpretation? I don't mean to be curt or impolite in any way. But please do think about the passages again. Was Paul's main thrust marriage per se, or was he not laying down more far-reaching moral and spiritual qualifications for a church leader and saying, parenthetically as it were, that if a man happened to be married, it must be a marriage as God ordained, i.e., to one woman? Ed, that is the only sense of the passage that really makes sense and is in proper context with the rest of Scripture. Herewith, along with previous posts, I have said all I know to say and close my book on this topic. Grace to you. --Hank |