NOTES for Ti1 3:1-13

Turning to the subject of church ministries, Paul gives special importance to two of them: the ministry of the deacon and the ministry of the bishop. This, of course, is no accident: the two ministries mentioned held a central place in the early Christian church. Deacons were responsible for organizing and conducting church gatherings, including those at which the breaking of bread took place. They were the ones who, first of all, were answerable before God and the church for the spiritual condition of the church community. That is why the apostle requires precisely them to "hold the mystery of the faith with a pure conscience" (v. 9). And for this they had to preserve spiritual and moral purity not only in church and public life, but also in family and personal life (vv. 8, 10-12).

Normal church life requires that the one who presides over the community be its face before God and an example for everyone in spiritual life; righteousness here was not merely desirable, but directly necessary, and Paul reminds Timothy of this, since he most likely had more than once had to resolve questions and problems in the churches he visited. The requirements for bishops were somewhat different, which is not surprising: their role in the church of Paul's time was completely unlike what it is today. Their main function in the early Christian church was administrative and economic, and this determined the requirements Paul set for candidates for the office of bishop (vv. 1-7). The apostle, as we can see, paid especially close attention to the state of the candidate's own household, rightly reasoning that a person who does not know how to put his own house in order will be even less able to do this in the church. In addition, a bishop needed, in Paul's phrase, "a good testimony from outsiders," that is, from the local population and, apparently, also from representatives of the authorities, since he was responsible for everything connected with the legal side of the church community's existence.

But the main thing to which the apostle draws attention is a calling from God to the ministry the minister bears; otherwise, clearly, there can be no question of any "worthy place" ("higher rank," v. 13) for the minister in the Kingdom. Meanwhile, as we can see, for Paul the main thing is not the "benefit" of the church considered as an organization, or even as a church community, but the rootedness in the Kingdom of those who bear church ministries. For the Church does not and cannot have any more important task than witness to the Kingdom. And if those who are most visible in the church community are able to become a living example of the Kingdom in all its fullness, this will become the best witness for everyone who comes to the Church in search of new life.

Continuing his discussion of ministries in the Church, Paul dwells particularly on two of them: the ministry of the deacon and that of the bishop. This is hardly surprising, for these were the two principal ministries in every church community of the earliest Christian period. Each had at least one deacon, and virtually every large community had its own bishop. Of course, the ministries of deacon and bishop and their place in the community bore little resemblance to what had become the norm for the Church by the end of the second century. In the earliest Christian period, leadership of the community was entrusted specifically to the deacon. This was standard practice in the Jewish religious brotherhoods of Gospel times. These brotherhoods consisted of communities that gathered for communal ritual meals centred on the breaking of bread—meals for the Sabbath or other Jewish religious festivals, such as Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.

If it was a family meal, the head of the household presided and blessed the bread and the cup. At a brotherhood meal, however, the role of the householder was played by a designated ‘servant’, a deacon. He presided over the gathering, blessed and broke the bread, and blessed the cup. Sometimes a community might have several such deacons, and in certain cases they were joined by so-called ‘deaconesses’, who performed the rituals and prayers at the gathering that Jewish religious prescriptions reserved exclusively for women.

It is no coincidence that deacons are required to understand the mystery of the Christian faith fully and purely—to ‘hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience’. The central mystery of Christianity is abiding within the relationship of Father and Son, without which there is neither Christian life in general nor church life in particular. And the Christian breaking of bread can take place only within this relationship, with the Saviour Himself participating; otherwise it ceases to be properly Christian.

Naturally, the Church's teachers, its rabbis, also reminded people of this. They taught the practice of the inward Torah and exercised the ‘ministry of the word’, as distinct from the deacons' ‘ministry of tables’—a traditional division in Jewish religious brotherhoods. But the deacons, too, must never forget what mattered most: it was they who said the prayer blessing the bread and the cup. The community's economic and administrative affairs, meanwhile, were managed by ‘overseers’, bishops, specially chosen for the task.

What Paul principally requires of a bishop is honesty, integrity and the ability to manage his own household: even this requires administrative ability and a practical head for household affairs. If a person's household is in complete disorder, he certainly will not be able to manage the affairs of a church community. And, of course, a bishop must not be a drunkard, a fighter or a troublemaker. Nor must he be too greedy for money: before long, he might start confusing his own pocket with the community's.

A good reputation among outsiders—a ‘good report from those outside’—could be especially useful in diaspora synagogues, since a synagogue, including a Christian one, was often registered in the bishop's name. He was responsible for it before the authorities from whom he obtained registration. Under Roman imperial law, founding unregistered communities or taking part in them was considered a crime against the state, equivalent to treason. These, then, are the two ministries most important to the Church of which Paul speaks to Timothy, urging him to choose wisely the people to whom he entrusts them.