Does My Sexual Past Disqualify Me from Pastoring?
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back on This Monday. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Well, there are
00:00:09.320 | many factors that would disqualify a man from holding the office of elder or pastor in a
00:00:15.600 | local church. And that raises an important discussion about a man's history. To what
00:00:20.600 | extent does a man's sinful past come into play in his qualification or lack of qualification
00:00:26.200 | today, specifically when that sin is sexual sin? That's the question from a young man
00:00:31.360 | we have now. "Dear Pastor Jen, hello. Ever since I was converted about four years ago,
00:00:35.960 | I've felt a strong desire to pursue full-time pastoring. My heart's desire is to serve the
00:00:41.560 | Lord and the flock for the rest of my life. And that desire has only grown more intense
00:00:46.920 | as time goes on. Not only this, but in this past year, the Lord has set before me everything
00:00:53.160 | needed to pursue this, like seminary training and support from my elders. There's just one
00:00:59.560 | major question I must answer now. Does my pre-conversion life of fornication disqualify
00:01:06.120 | me for pastoral ministry now? I have repented, but that life was filled to the brim with
00:01:14.160 | sin. According to 1 Corinthians 6.16, I became one flesh with a girl I committed this sin
00:01:19.280 | with. I'm unmarried now. But considering 1 Timothy 3.2, does my sinful past disqualify
00:01:25.880 | me from eldership today?" No, I don't think your past fornication disqualifies you for
00:01:34.160 | ministry, not in and of itself. And the reason I say it like that is because it would be
00:01:43.480 | part of what disqualifies you if it was part of an ongoing character flaw of bondage to
00:01:54.000 | sensuality or pornography or lack of self-control. Past fornication need not disqualify from
00:02:01.880 | ministry unless it's part of an ongoing sinful, unsanctified blemish in the present.
00:02:10.720 | So let me step back then and give three, I think it's just three, reasons from Scripture
00:02:20.320 | why I think that's true. Why a man who is rebellious in the season of life, commits
00:02:29.240 | fornication, but has been free from that sin, repentant of its moral and spiritual Christ
00:02:39.840 | dishonoring ugliness for long enough to prove his genuine newness, why it may be right to
00:02:51.400 | consider that man for Christian ministry in Christ's church.
00:02:56.960 | So here's the first argument. Paul's example in his past life and present ministry with
00:03:05.820 | Christ's blessing is really quite astonishing because of the actual use he himself makes
00:03:13.160 | of that example. Paul was complicit in Stephen's murder in Acts 7. Then as he became a ringleader
00:03:21.640 | in the efforts to stamp out Christianity with imprisonments and murders, it got even worse
00:03:28.440 | and more intentional. Acts 9, verse 1, "Saul, still breathing threats and murder against
00:03:37.280 | the disciples of the Lord, went to Damascus." In short, Paul was a murderer, and murderers
00:03:45.040 | don't have eternal life in them, John said. Paul's own assessment of his pre-Christian
00:03:51.680 | life was that he was the worst, the foremost of sinners, and that God saved him and used
00:04:02.060 | him anyway precisely as an example to others who feel hopeless about their future possibilities
00:04:09.700 | of forgiveness and usefulness is a precious reality in Scripture. Here's the way he says
00:04:18.740 | it in 1 Timothy 1, 15 and 16, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance
00:04:27.740 | that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost, but I received
00:04:36.460 | mercy for this reason." And this is why it's so remarkable because he himself—we don't
00:04:41.780 | have to make this application—he's making the application. "I received mercy for this
00:04:46.540 | reason that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience
00:04:55.700 | as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life." So Paul gives his
00:05:01.460 | own experience of mercy as an example that I think extends to a person who may not have
00:05:11.260 | murdered but has in fact committed fornication. That's my first argument.
00:05:18.620 | Second, it's a little more complicated because the young fellow that we're dealing with here,
00:05:26.100 | he's sharp. He has studied and he's thought through the possible blockages to his own
00:05:33.860 | eldership. He's asking a more sophisticated question. He says, he asks, on the basis of
00:05:42.980 | 1 Corinthians 6, 16, whether in fact fornication is a unique kind of sin that may exclude from
00:05:54.660 | ministry when in fact murder may not. Now that's a thoughtful question because of the
00:06:00.860 | way Paul argues against fornication in 1 Corinthians 6. And because 1 Timothy 3, 2, which he refers
00:06:10.620 | to, in that text Paul says that a minister in the church must be the husband of one wife,
00:06:19.460 | which some translate a one-woman man. That's a pretty common paraphrase, a one-woman man.
00:06:27.620 | In other words, our friend, this young fellow, wonders if he can qualify as a one-woman man
00:06:37.040 | because he committed fornication. That's the way he's thinking, which is a good way to
00:06:42.260 | think. I mean, it's a good question to ask. It means he's not weaseling. He's not trying
00:06:46.720 | to squeak out of the rigors of Scripture. So let me try to clarify what I think Paul
00:06:52.240 | means by husband of one woman. That's important in the way his argument against himself is
00:06:58.360 | working and why one-woman man may be a misleading translation. I got a lot of friends that translate
00:07:07.160 | it that way, and I've got misgivings about that translation. Suppose your pastor is single.
00:07:15.200 | Now I think that's legitimate. Jesus is single. Paul is single. I think it's legitimate to
00:07:21.040 | have a single man for a pastor. Suppose your pastor is single and he commits fornication
00:07:28.960 | regularly with only one woman. Would he qualify as being a one-woman man? Well, good grief,
00:07:37.640 | Piper. Technically, yes, and we all know that's not what Paul meant. So translating husband
00:07:46.600 | of one woman as one-woman man can get us into difficulty if we're not careful. Paul really
00:07:54.280 | is dealing with marriage and whether a man is faithful to his wife, whether he commits
00:08:01.400 | adultery. Now, the question then becomes, what do we make of Paul's argument against
00:08:09.560 | fornication in 1 Corinthians 6? Because some might say, well, Paul really does argue that
00:08:20.340 | in essence a sexual relationship before marriage is a kind of marriage. And then our young
00:08:27.660 | friend might draw the conclusion, well, so I was in a sense married, and I'm not faithful
00:08:34.880 | to that girl today by not being married to her officially, not to mention that I can't
00:08:40.040 | even get married legitimately if I'm still married to her because that old relationship.
00:08:46.040 | Is that what Paul meant? He says in 1 Corinthians 6:14-18, "The body is not meant for sexual
00:08:58.640 | immorality," that is fornication, "but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. Do you
00:09:08.000 | not know that your bodies," and here he's getting very specific. He means our sexual
00:09:14.000 | organs. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" So our body parts
00:09:21.920 | are Christ's body parts. "Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members
00:09:30.260 | of a prostitute?" And he cries out, "Never!" And then here's the tricky part. He argues
00:09:38.780 | like this, "Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body
00:09:47.660 | with her?" And he quotes Genesis 2:24, which is about marriage. "For as it is written,
00:09:55.120 | the two shall become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with
00:10:03.940 | him." Flee from sexual immorality. That's the end of 1 Corinthians 6:14-18. So Paul
00:10:11.660 | portrays the horror of fornication for the Christian as taking the body parts of Christ,
00:10:22.300 | because ours are his, and making them body parts of a prostitute. That's how intimate
00:10:29.500 | and profound sexual intercourse is in Paul's apostolic-inspired mind. You become one body
00:10:39.220 | with her. What makes the text look ominous for our young friend is that Paul quotes Genesis
00:10:47.540 | 2:24, which is a text about marriage. "The two shall become one flesh." So does Paul
00:10:54.620 | mean that in essence then the one who fornicates with a prostitute is married to her? That's
00:11:04.020 | what he wonders, so that he would be excluded because of 1 Timothy 3.2. And my answer is
00:11:11.660 | no. That's not what Paul means. He could have said that. He doesn't draw that inference
00:11:19.420 | or that conclusion. Wow, that would have been powerful. Wow. If he had said that, but he
00:11:24.460 | didn't go there. So what's he doing? I think what he's doing is this. He says, "What
00:11:32.380 | makes fornication so horrible is that it takes the one flesh design of marriage and prostitutes
00:11:41.860 | it." He prostitutes that part of marriage by stripping it out of the covenant relationship
00:11:50.780 | of marriage and treating it as though it was designed for a prostitute. It's precisely
00:11:57.700 | that this is not a marriage that makes the prostitution of Christ's body parts so horrible.
00:12:05.380 | The one flesh union designed for marriage, which represents Christ in the church, which
00:12:11.460 | is why it's not idolatry to have sex in marriage. Marriage is a representation of Christ in
00:12:18.540 | the church. To take it out of that, out of that sacred covenant with a wife and with
00:12:25.020 | Christ and prostitute it in fornication is what makes this fornication so horrible.
00:12:34.180 | So I conclude that Paul was not treating fornication as a kind of marriage. There is no covenant
00:12:41.980 | formed at all with this prostitute, and that is precisely what makes the sexual similarity
00:12:48.320 | to marriage so morally and spiritually ugly. Therefore, I don't think Paul's argument
00:12:56.460 | in 1 Corinthians 6 means that our young, repentant, transformed friend should use this text to
00:13:06.220 | argue that he's excluded from the eldership simply because of 1 Timothy 3.2, which says
00:13:16.220 | he must be the husband of one woman. One last observation, which is also precious.
00:13:24.700 | In this same chapter of 1 Corinthians 6, Paul specifically refers to fornication as something
00:13:32.700 | in the church that has been cleansed and forgiven. Verses 9 to 11, "Do not be deceived, the
00:13:42.860 | sexually immoral," and he's referring to fornication there because later he refers
00:13:47.940 | to adulterers. So he's distinguishing adultery and sexual morality here. "The sexually
00:13:54.940 | immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God, and such were some of you. But you were washed,
00:14:05.220 | you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the
00:14:11.520 | Spirit of our God, to which I say, 'Praise God that any of us can be saved from our sin.'"
00:14:20.700 | So my conclusion is that the elders of this young man's church should—and if they're
00:14:26.740 | listening to me, greetings in the name of Jesus—the elders of this young man's church
00:14:33.740 | should carefully and biblically assess his qualifications for ministry and not let that
00:14:40.540 | past sin of fornication be decisive in excluding him.
00:14:45.220 | Thank you, Pastor John. Thank you for joining us today. We tackle a lot of tricky questions
00:14:50.660 | on the podcast, obviously, and many of them anonymously, like this question today. You
00:14:54.940 | can ask your own question, even anonymously, via email through our online home, AskPastorJohn.com.
00:15:01.860 | Well, John 9, verse 3 is a classic text for us at Desiring God, a go-to text for us when
00:15:11.080 | it comes to trying to understand God's good design in human disability. It's about the
00:15:18.040 | man born blind. Next time we look at another part of that story, because as you may remember,
00:15:22.460 | Jesus healed that blind man by spitting on the ground, mixing his spit with dirt, making
00:15:27.020 | mud, applying the paste to the man's blind eyes, and then sending him off to a pool where
00:15:33.180 | he was washed and healed. So why the spit, and why the mud? It's a great question with
00:15:40.380 | two answers, up next. I'm your host Tony Rehnke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:15:45.340 | [END]
00:15:47.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]