Chapter 3

Qualifications for overseers.

MSB notes says the Greek is "one woman man", and therefore says nothing AT ALL about marriage or divorce.  Really????  John MacArthur says this???  Goes on to say this is not about marital status but about moral and sexual purity.  MSB goes on to eliminate many of my favorite interpretations of this verse.  He says the Bible does not even prohibit all remarriage after divorce.  The Bible encourages remarriage after death of a spouse.  If you couldn't be single, then Paul wasn't qualified as an apostle.  It doesn't say it, but MSB seems to imply that past "impurity" is not an immediate disqualification.  Who you are now is what is important.  This one is a difficult one for me.  MSB maintains that this is only about moral and sexual purity - marital status, now or previous, is irrelevant.

MSB mentions that among the qualifications "able to teach" is the only one that is different for elders and deacons.  The preaching and teaching of God's word is the primary responsibility of the overseer/elder/pastor.

Hmm...MSB talks about divorced elders in vs 4, under "who manages his own household well".  Quoting, "A divorced man gives no evidence of a well-managed home, but rather that divorce shows weakness in his spiritual leadership.  If there has been a Biblically permitted divorce it must have been so far in the past as to have been overcome by a long pattern of solid family leadership and the rearing of godly children. (v. 4, Titus 1:6)  It goes on to say this, very specifically - An elders children must be believers, well-behaved, and respectful.

2021 - It seems beyond clear in this chapter that there are both deacons and elders.  They are separate offices, with similar, but not precisely the same, qualification. 

2022, Later - See notes on 1Tim 5:9,14.  Divorce does not disqualify you from being a deacon or an elder.  I had this wrong.

This verse:

11 Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. [1Ti 3:11 ESV], but in NASB:

11 Women [must] likewise [be] dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things. [1Ti 3:11 NASB]

Wow...MSB says of vs. 11, that this may be about women who serve as deacons, rather than deacon's wives!  This is based on use of the word "likewise" indicating a third group besides elders and deacons - women.  Also, no qualifications were given for elders wives, why would there be qualifications for deacon's wives. 

I am having my eyes opened this morning...Women cannot be in leadership positions in the church, but can most certainly be in service positions.  That's what this is saying.  So long as their character and behavior meets the required high standard, they can serve as deacons.  The line is at teaching - which is reserved for elders/overseers/apostles. 

2024 - That word translated likewise is used both in vs 8, in the phrase "deacons likewise".  In 8 the word follows "deacon" and is shown as an adverb...so it goes with "must be".  "Deacons likewise must".  I don't think it changes anything, but note that the word "must" is missing from the Greek.  It is an implied verb, shown in italics in many translations, confirming that it is not really there.

2024 - In vs 11, in the Greek, the first word changes from "deacons" to "women" (in the NASB, NIV, RSV) followed by the same two words we saw back in vs 8, except that the gender of "dignified" is changed from masculine to feminine, for obvious reasons.  So the construction of the sentence is the same in both these verses.

2024 - NASB95 translates vs 12 as "husbands of ONLY one wife".  Note that "only" is in italics, telling us that it is added, and does not appear in the original text.

2024 - All this to try and "agree or disagree" with MacArthur that women can be deacons.  His argument is that if deacons are different than elders, if they are a separate group - and that is certainly how it reads - then use of exactly the same construction in vs 11 makes women/wives a third, separate group.  What mitigates against that?  Well look at 12.  IF we have changed entirely to a third group, why does Paul jump backwards in vs 12 and tell us more about the deacons, who are called husbands, and one woman men?  Surely the order of the verses says that in vs 11, it was STILL the deacons - who were husbands and so obviously male in addition to the masculine ending on the noun - that were in view in vs 11.  The deacons wives ARE a separate group from the deacons, and it seems that we should understand it that way.  Either that, or we must see vs 12 as more of an "oh yeah, I forgot to mention that deacons have to be one woman men too".  I have a hard time interpreting it this way. 

2024 - And just one more thing...Jumping all the way back to the qualifications for elders, the Greek word translated "wife" in vs 2 is "gynaikos".   In vs 12, exactly precisely this same word in this same form is used of deacon's wives.  In both vs 2 and vs 12, this word is in the genitive case.  That means, according to BLB:

"The genitive case refers to the case used for a noun, pronoun, or adjective to show description.

E.g. His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple."  "His" is genitive.  I have always thought of the genitive as sort of showing possession, and you can interchange "Disciples of His" with "His disciples".  Possessive.  In vs 12, it could read "husband of wife" or "wife's husband".  It works.

So what happens in vs 11?  Well in this case, we get a different ending on the word, and it reads "gynaikas".  So here, the word is in the accusative case.  Here is what BLB says about the accusative:

"The accusative case refers to the case used for a noun or pronoun that is a direct object.

E.g. His disciples came up to show Him the buildings of the temple."  We might add "the direct object of the verb".  So in the example, it would be "show the building".  We can rearrange this one as "show the buildings TO Him. 

So in vs 11, what is the verb:

11 Their wives likewise must be dignified, not slanderers, but sober-minded, faithful in all things. [1Ti 3:11 ESV].  Well there isn't one.  The verb "to be" is implied and is italicized to show it isn't there.  So.  We can immediately see the difference between the accusative used here and the genitive.  So try and make it work like the example.  Instead of show buildings we would get be wives.  That doesn't work.  And we also cannot say "be wives TO them", because clearly "be" goes with dignified, not wives. 

Hmmm...just noticed that the word "their", as used in the ESV,  is NOT in the Greek.  To go along with that, I see that "gyne" is much more often translated women than wives.  If you leave out "their", which is only implied anyway, you get "women likewise", instead of "their wives" or "their women".  Even so, I do not see how the accusative case applies here.  It ought to be nominative - such that "women" is the subject of the sentence. What about "dignified wives TO THEM".  Now that works!  And in the accusative, SOME second noun MUST BE THERE, and in the KJV and ESV, the supplied noun is "their".  And it works.  It looks to me - and I am just surmising from what I can see in the BLB, that the NIV was the first translation to change "Their wives" to "the women".  NIV came out in 1978.  No...RSV did it first, when it was published in 1965-66.  YLT did it in 1862.  So, we cannot say that "the women" was an attempt at including feminism in the Bible and blame it on the NIV.  We can't even blame the RSV, but have to go all the way back to pre-Civil war, and that's just as far as I know.  Could be even older than that.

2024 - So sadly, after all this time spent on Greek grammar, I have not come up with an inarguable position on how to translate vs 11.  However, I DO think I have come up with a decent argument that "their" should be in there since gyne is in the accusative case here and not the nominative.  And based on this argument, plus the "skipping around" argument, I conclude that this is NOT implying that women can serve as deacons.  And there is a third argument.  Women cannot have wives, which is certainly stated in as a requi...no...it isn't.  Paul had no wife and was an elder...so all we can say on that score is that if you DO have a wife, you can only have one.  But I don't see any way to flop this over to women deacons can only have one husband.  No.  That does not work.  And I will leave it there. 

2025 - This verse is the one that makes it complicated:

12 Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well. [1Ti 3:12 ESV].

You have elder qualifications in vs 2.  You have deacon qualifications in vs 8.  Two groups.  You have women's (or maybe wives is correct here...) behavior addressed in vs 11.  NO TITLE is mentioned - not elder, not deacon, not servant of the church...nothing.  It is just a behavior requirement. 

It does not seem accurate to say the women are some third, separate group.  If they were, they'd need a separate title.  We almost have to see this as separate qualifications that apply to women who want to be deacons. 

But then you get vs 12, which goes back to deacons once again.  And it applies strictly to male deacons.  We cannot look at it as first listing qualifications for male deacons, then for female deacons, and then for both...which would make some sense.  Husband of one wife, for all it's other controversy, is not applicable to males and females, but only to males. 

The word translated either wife or women in vs 11 is gyne.  129 times the KJV translates the word "women" and 92 times it is translated wife.  So we cannot say that the translators had to go out of their way to translate the word wife in this case, and that then makes it clear that these are the wives of those who would be deacons.  It is clear IF and ONLY IF you translate it as wives.  The whole verse fits into the flow and context is you translate the word "wives".  If you translate it women though, look at the box you have opened.  It destroys the flow of the passage, making it jump back and froth from the male deacons to the female deacons and then back to the male deacons - and requires that Paul sort of loses then regains his train of thought about male deacons.  I thin this is THE BEST argument yet for  how this ought to read.  I say the context and flow require that gyne be translated as wife, such the behavior of th wife of one who would be a deacon is included in the testing of vs 10 of that man's qualifications.  Deacons, and so consequently their wives, were much more involved than the elders in the day to day interactions with church members.  More seen, better known, more subject to accusation and hostility should their wives be bad mouthing people when delivering widow's meals.

I am going with this as my position.

This verse:

14 I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, [1Ti 3:14 ESV]  Before, when he has hoped to come, he has mentioned his imprisonment.  He even talks in one book about expecting to be released (it was noted above in the MSB intro to the book).  No chains are mentioned here, no hindrances.  We might safely assume that Paul has been released, and is making his own decisions about what he does and where he goes during this time.