a bishop (lit. 'overseer') then must be
blameless
the husband of one wife
vigilent
sober
of good behavior
given to hospitality
APT TO TEACH...let's stop here on the list of qualifications necessary for what we commonly call in america, the pastor.
the pastor is a shepherd of sheep, the human kind who are marked by several things that the animal kind are known for. sheep wander away. they get themselves stuck in thorny places. at times they, i don't know the correct way to say this, are cast, that is they fall down and can't get up. human beings tend to wander away from God and get stuck in 'places' they can't get out of without great pain or at times they find themselves absolutely helpless and will die a slow miserable death unless helped. Jesus, who is now in heaven is called the great shepherd and the good shepherd, if i have that right...and it would appear that He is the example for human shepherds, pastors, are to follow.
the only thing Jesus was known to do during His 3+ years of ministry was to
1. proclaim the gospel of the kingdom constantly everywhere He went
2. taught
3. helped people who were in need.
as He did this His disciples (lit. 'learners) listened, asked questions and were given opportunities to help people in need.
Jesus' teaching was not of intellectual facts. His purpose was to teach a way of life that was a carbon copy of His own. when His followers (He initiated all this by calling certain people to 'follow Me'.) wandered, found themselves in difficulty or worse, He came to them and helped them. several examples were how he calmed the stormy sea when the disciples thought they were about to drown on the sea of galilee and how He went to peter immediately after He rose from the dead...the one who had cursed and sworn that he did not know Jesus and went away from Him as He was undergoing the trial leading to His crucifixion.
when Jesus ascended up into heaven He left behind Him the pattern for all those on earth that He would call to follow Him, that is those who He expected to do exactly what He did. He also left the same pattern for those He would call to play the role He played for His disciple. these men were to be flesh and blood examples of the life that Jesus lived when He was here. they were also to watch over all the people Jesus called to imitate His life...just the way He did.
Jesus' goal was to speak and live what He saw His heavenly Father do and heard His heavenly Father say. how closely a disciple approximated Jesus' life was measured by how closely he spoke and lived Truth. the pastor or undershepherd's goal is to speak and live Truth with the goal that Jesus' followers around him would do the same. whoever does this, to the degree they do it they will lose their lives, will be persecuted and may well be martyred. there are very few who will be in heaven...and every one of them will be like these shepherds and the sheep who they watch over as they all speak and live Truth.
so one of the important requirements of the undershepherd, the overseer of Jesus' sheep is that he be APT TO TEACH. this means he does things like,
1. make disciples (matthew 28. 18-20)
2. imitate Christ (ephesians 5.1)
3. perfect the saints...how do we know they are perfected?
they do a work...what kind of work?
ministry...what does that supply?
first, unity of faith...that means they all believe the same thing? they all believe what God say, what Jesus did was true.
second,
1. knowledge of the Son of God, that leads
2. unto a perfect man, that leads
3. unto a measure of the
stature of the
fullness of
Christ, in other words knowledge of Him that leads a person to be exactly like Him.
...so to summarize so far
pastor-teachers
are to perfect disciples of Jesus
so that they do a work
that is marked by complete faith in what Jesus says shared by all other 'believers' in Him, and
complete imitation of who Jesus is and what He did
2 things result in the lives of these believer/imitators:
1. THEY ARE NO MORE CHILDREN
tossed to and fro, AND
carried about with every wind of doctrine
by the sleight of men and
cunning craftiness whereby
they lie in wait to disceive
BUT
2. SPEAKING THE TRUTH IN LOVE
may grow up
into Him (in all things)
which is the head,
even Christ.
how does a man who heals every person who needs it and occasionally raises people from the dead only manage to live for several years (and only that long due to a number of strategic withdrawals from places of danger) before He is - being considered worse than a murderer and treated worse than a criminal and nearly universally abandoned even by those who professed to be closest to Him - mocked, ridiculed, abused, beaten, stripped of the little He owned and crucified, as one considered a curse, on a cross?
HE SPOKE AND LIVED TRUTH.
THIS WHAT THE OVERSEER IS TO BE APT TO TEACH.
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