Ryan W

According to text the job of the elders/overseers was the teaching aspect of the ministry. The elders are responsbile for the teaching of doctrine and correcting those who oppose it. Overseers also do some teaching, but only from the stand of encouraging believers. Deacons were like the administrative leaders. They were the ones who took care of the daily ministration of duties around the church like visiting the sick, helping the poor and carrying out specific job duties. The only kind of teaching the deacons would do would be exhortation of believers. They are the ones who would do the pastoral care work of the church.

We don't want people in the house of God being afraid to do anything in fear of making someone in the church angry. Anger is a problem with people who are in leadership because Paul said that people in ministry need to be gentle and loving. If someone who has anger issues in the church or someone who intimidates people and uses force will lead to inappropriate decision making. The person in leadership may resort to tactics that can be violent or even harmful to other people if he does not get his way.

This question has a lot to do with me. I have been in a situation like this before. I was selected for leadership 6 months after I joined the church I was at. I was not able to handle the responsibility and I got removed three months later. If a person is selected for leadership too early it can spell disaster for the church and it can hurt the person who is in the place of leadership. I believe there should be a time of proving for at least 12-18 months. If a person is placed in leadership too quickly it can lead to an attack from the enemy. The person may not be ready to accept the roles and the responsibilities of the leadership role they are taking on. Reason for that is many eyes are watching those who are in leadership. The thing that we need to be looking for in qualified leaders is faithfulness. Leaders must live a life that is faithful, holy and just they must love what is good and shun that which is evil. There are a lot of other things to consider. Another reason that new converts or even someone who is already a Christian but new to a particular church needs to be proven first because they can get into pride and become arrogant. That is the same kind of deception that caused Satan to fall from his place in heaven.

Personally, I think what Paul is saying about the husband of one wife includes all of things that were mentioned in the the text. I truly believe that the husband needs to practice monogamy as wells as being faithful to the wife and not committing adultery. When it comes to the issue about divorce and remarriage, I have to be careful what I say. I believe that if the husband has been faithful, but the wife has not been faithful and has left her husband for another man that should not affect his qualities or his qualifications for leadership. I myself am in that situation. My ex-wife left me. Why should I have to pay the price for her decision. Does it reflect on me? I don't think it should. The role of the family is important when considering the candidate for leadership. The text said that if the family is not in order that generally means in some regard that the leader of the family, the husband is not tending to his family. But lets also be careful with this one. We have to consider that children are going to be children at home and at church. I draw the line at the point of being disrespectful in the house of God. We need to instruct our children that the house of God is to be respected, but kids are not always going to behave properly at church. They are going to get wild and little out of control. I believe that what Paul is saying applies more to children who know the difference between right and wrong and know how to behave in the church. I do not believe this applies to children such as infants and toddlers who are still being reared in the ways of right and wrong. For example a teenager by the time he reaches 13 years should know how to behave in church, but a child who is five may not. We cannot judge the character of the candidate from the actions of his children especially if they are at an age where they are being reared in the ways of right and wrong. Also take into consideration that a child who was not raised in church is going to act differently than a child who was raised in church. This is a tough answer to this question.

The point in which we move from being in Adam to being in Christ is at baptism. The first thing a person has to do is repent of sins and turn to Jesus Christ and confess His Lordship and make the confession that He was raised from the dead. At that point you become in Christ. The purpose of the baptism in this is for us to indentify with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and become one with Him. The implications of having died with Christ is that we now share everything with Christ. Our union with Christ means we are now joined to Him so everything that took place in His death, burial, and resurrection now belongs to us.

The point in which we move from being in Adam to being in Christ is at baptism. The first thing a person has to do is repent of sins and turn to Jesus Christ and confess His Lordship and make the confession that He was raised from the dead. At that point you become in Christ. The purpose of the baptism in this is for us to indentify with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and become one with Him. The implications of having died with Christ is that we now share everything with Christ. Our union with Christ means we are now joined to Him so everything that took place in His death, burial, and resurrection now belongs to us.

Adam was the progenitor of all mankind. Adam was the first man. Adam is the one who introduced sin into the world and because of that everytything the came from Adam was effected by his choice to sin. His shame became our shame, his sin became our sin. Christ as a representation of the first Adam before he sinned. He was perfect and sinless. Christ was perfect and sinless. He was a representation of what God originally created man to be. So by Adams' sin all became sinners. Christ when he died on the cross He died for all mankind thus making himself the second Adam and reversing everything that happened in Adam. Before Christ we were in Adam. After Christ died we were taken out of Adam and placed in Christ.

Paul was saying that without the law sin cannot be transgressed. How can anyone know that they are committing a crime if there is no law in place to tell them they cannot committ such behavior without consequences. There is sin without law, but if the law was never put in place then God could not hold us accountable. The trespass increases because we receive knowledge of the law. Generally what happens is when we are told that we cannot do something then by the nature of sin that is present we automatically become drawn to doing the one thing we are told we cannot do. Think about three a child is told he cannot have a chocalate chip cookie. If I don't tell my three year old that he cannot have cookies before dinner, if he does it I cannot hold him accountable. I cannot punish him for doing wrong if he does not know that he is doing wrong. But as soon as I tell him "No cookies until after dinner," that is when the rule is in place and any action that he does that breaks that rule can be punished. That is generally when we want to committ the wrong, when we know it is wrong.

I think what is being asked here is how does headship affect those under the head? I have heard lots of teaching on this and the best answer I can come up with is, the role of the husband and father of the family unit. The husband is the head of the wife and every decision that the husband makes will ultimately trickle down to the wife and then down to the children. We all know that children learn by observation, so how the father acts in public or in church or at home will ultimately determine how children will behave in church. Another good example of headship is the role of the pastor and his congregation. Every decision the pastor makes ultimately will affect the congregation. That is why sometimes churches split in two. There is someone there who does not respect the head or the pastoral head of the church and breaks away. The pastor of the church needs to stay humble before God and makes sure that what he is leading his congregation in is what God wants. If the pastor leads the churh in the direction that God is wanting the church to move in the church will experience phenomenal growth. But if the pastor is not living right, making wrong choices, it will affect his congregation. Spiritual growth will be stunted, church growth will slow to ceasing. The Holy Spirit is grieved if not quenched.

The word reconciliation means to make peace with. When we reconcile our differences with someone else we are agreeing to a solution to the problem. That is what happened when Jesus died on the cross. When Jesus took our place He became our mediator between God and man. The means in which Christ mediated the conflict between God and man was through His death which was a substitutionary ransom. This means that Jesus took our place. Jesus had to do this because there was no amount of good in us that we could redeem ourselves back to God. Now, that Christ took our place and died our death we have been reconciled to God. In a reconciliation both parties have to agree to the terms that the mediator offers. We were enemies with God, we by nature were hostile toward God and hated God and His righteous standards. But with what Jesus had done on the cross God's righteous ways are satisfied and man now has been restored His rights and priveleges that he had before Adam's fall. As a result of this reconcilatory work that Christ did we are saved from wrath of God that abides upon the unrepentant sinner. But it does not stop there, there is more. Because we now have been reconciled unto God we can now partake of the divine nature that is in Christ. We have a free invitation to begin to develop in ourselves the same character that is in Christ. We can begin to conform to His image. What does this mean? Because sin no longer has any hold on us we can walk and live as Christ lived. We can begin to be more like Jesus.

I believe that we need to embrace the truth that when Christ died for us we were ungodly. Ungodly meaning we did not have the life of God in us. It does not necessarily mean that we did anything wrong. By nature we were not right with God and therefore had no hope and had no power to change things. The fact that Christ died for sinners was a demonstration of God's love for us. Christ died for us when we were at our worst condition. We were by nature separated from God. This gives us the assurance that God is not done working in us. God is not going to give up on us. The devil wants us to think that way. He wants us to think that we are not worthy of God's love and God's protection. But, the bible says that if any man sins, he has an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous (1 John 2:1). All we have to do is come to God and confess our sins, and He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).

Shirley I like your definition of perseverance. I read this and I got to thinking about what I wrote in my post and I see it better now. Perseverance is the exercising of our faith. That is is good way to put it. Ryan W

Paul tells us to rejoice in our sufferings and tribulations because of what it produces. Many believes wonder why God allows His people to suffer. Suffering and tribulations produce in us the character of God's nature. Take time to read about the character of God's nature by reading the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:21-24. This is what we are striving to be like. Suffering produces perseverance or patience. Perseverance is the capacity to hold out in the face of difficult situations. I personally call it stick-a-bility. Perseverance is the attitude of the new testament believer. Perseverance is what produces character in us. Many of us have heard the coinage "character is who you are when no one is looking." "character is how you conduct yourself behind the scenes." That is saying alot. How do we conduct ourselves when no one is looking? Many Christians have two lives. They have a life in church and a life outside of church and neither of them cross paths or have anything to do with the other. Many Christians act one way at home and another way in church and their is absolutely no consistency. Character is defined as experience that you have obtained while being tested. Character is the experience of perseverance. Character produces hope. Hope is the expectation of the future. Hope is the expectancy of fulfillment. We cannot make it in life without hope. We are going through all of this suffering in order to build grow in patience, build character so that we can obtain a fulfillment of promise. What is that promise? 1 John 3:2 tells us that when we see Jesus we shall be like Him. That is what our hope is. We are going through all of this suffering and tribulation so we can come out on the other side looking more and more like Jesus.

I believe that Paul's instructions about women teaching in the church is also a culture conflict of the times. Paul did not say that a woman could not teach or speak in church. It says that a woman should do so in a manner that reflects disrespect. Women who teach in the church are welcomed and permitted. But what Paul was saying is that women should not usurp authority over their husbands. In other words they should not openly disagree with things that their husbands say in public meetings. I actually believe that women should be permitted to teach in the church. Women should be allowed to teach other women in the church. Paul actually said that younger women should glean from the experiences of other women. In today's society many women are starting to take on the role of pastors and leaders in the church and many denominational churches frown on this. It is a pointless argument over the roles of women in the church. The bible is plain and not hard to understand. Nothing in scripture says a woman cannot teach.

It would cause a distraction. Some of the women in the church were dressing like the women of the society and culture that they were living in. They were dressing in such a manner to draw attention to themselves. They were dressing in a manner that reflected an unholy lifestyle. The culture of Rome at this time was very perverse culture. Paul was insgtructing women in the church to depart from that lifestyle and not bring that kind of culture into the church. Paul was instructing women to be careful how they appear in the house of God. Clothing is entirely a cultural matter. Before we start passing this instruction on we have to understand that in Paul's time the kind of clothing they wore was matter of culture. During Paul's time the wearing of jewelry and braiding of the hair was the adornments of a prostitute or lady of wealthy or noble status. Women dressed like that for the purpose of drawing attention to themselves. These days in our American culture those things are not offensive and acceptable and do not reflect the attitudes and lifestyles of someone who is trying to draw attention to themselves. Most women in today's society dress appropriately and wear jewelry to be seen and their hair in braids. These guidelines cannot be set in stone for all time.