Qualifications for Overseers – 1 Tim 3:1-7
(Titus 1:5–9; 1 Peter 5:1–4)

1This is a trustworthy saying: If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble task. 2An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife,a temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3not dependent on wine, not violent but gentle, peaceable, and free of the love of money.

4An overseer must manage his own household well and keep his children under control, with complete dignity. 5For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for the church of God? 6He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same condemnation as the devil. 7Furthermore, he must have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the snare of the devil.

In a teaching video on 1 Tim 3:1-7 by R. C. Sproul he stated that these qualifications for a bishop or overseer (episkopēs) in the Christian church cannot all be perfectly met in one man. Sproul referred to Paul’s descriptive words here as a panegyric, that is a type of oration that lists the glowing attributes of a person that are more of an eulogy or a set of ideals than actually all present in that person.

Sproul’s point is that if all of these qualifications must be met perfectly, all of the time, then we would have no one qualified to be a bishop or an elder or even a deacon. As with Jesus’ commentary on the words of the Beatitudes – Matt 5:48 – Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect – would disqualify anyone from becoming a Christian if he had to in fact be as perfect as God.

In both cases our “perfection” is positional in Christ and these are ideals set before us to strive for and also to accurately reflect the perfection that actually does reside in God and God alone.

The following definitions are respectively from the Apple dictionary and the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

We also have the word pageant which means