Welcome back on This Monday. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Well, there are many factors that would disqualify a man from holding the office of elder or pastor in a local church. And that raises an important discussion about a man's history. To what extent does a man's sinful past come into play in his qualification or lack of qualification today, specifically when that sin is sexual sin?

That's the question from a young man we have now. "Dear Pastor Jen, hello. Ever since I was converted about four years ago, I've felt a strong desire to pursue full-time pastoring. My heart's desire is to serve the Lord and the flock for the rest of my life. And that desire has only grown more intense as time goes on.

Not only this, but in this past year, the Lord has set before me everything needed to pursue this, like seminary training and support from my elders. There's just one major question I must answer now. Does my pre-conversion life of fornication disqualify me for pastoral ministry now? I have repented, but that life was filled to the brim with sin.

According to 1 Corinthians 6.16, I became one flesh with a girl I committed this sin with. I'm unmarried now. But considering 1 Timothy 3.2, does my sinful past disqualify me from eldership today?" No, I don't think your past fornication disqualifies you for ministry, not in and of itself. And the reason I say it like that is because it would be part of what disqualifies you if it was part of an ongoing character flaw of bondage to sensuality or pornography or lack of self-control.

Past fornication need not disqualify from ministry unless it's part of an ongoing sinful, unsanctified blemish in the present. So let me step back then and give three, I think it's just three, reasons from Scripture why I think that's true. Why a man who is rebellious in the season of life, commits fornication, but has been free from that sin, repentant of its moral and spiritual Christ dishonoring ugliness for long enough to prove his genuine newness, why it may be right to consider that man for Christian ministry in Christ's church.

So here's the first argument. Paul's example in his past life and present ministry with Christ's blessing is really quite astonishing because of the actual use he himself makes of that example. Paul was complicit in Stephen's murder in Acts 7. Then as he became a ringleader in the efforts to stamp out Christianity with imprisonments and murders, it got even worse and more intentional.

Acts 9, verse 1, "Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to Damascus." In short, Paul was a murderer, and murderers don't have eternal life in them, John said. Paul's own assessment of his pre-Christian life was that he was the worst, the foremost of sinners, and that God saved him and used him anyway precisely as an example to others who feel hopeless about their future possibilities of forgiveness and usefulness is a precious reality in Scripture.

Here's the way he says it in 1 Timothy 1, 15 and 16, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost, but I received mercy for this reason." And this is why it's so remarkable because he himself—we don't have to make this application—he's making the application.

"I received mercy for this reason that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life." So Paul gives his own experience of mercy as an example that I think extends to a person who may not have murdered but has in fact committed fornication.

That's my first argument. Second, it's a little more complicated because the young fellow that we're dealing with here, he's sharp. He has studied and he's thought through the possible blockages to his own eldership. He's asking a more sophisticated question. He says, he asks, on the basis of 1 Corinthians 6, 16, whether in fact fornication is a unique kind of sin that may exclude from ministry when in fact murder may not.

Now that's a thoughtful question because of the way Paul argues against fornication in 1 Corinthians 6. And because 1 Timothy 3, 2, which he refers to, in that text Paul says that a minister in the church must be the husband of one wife, which some translate a one-woman man.

That's a pretty common paraphrase, a one-woman man. In other words, our friend, this young fellow, wonders if he can qualify as a one-woman man because he committed fornication. That's the way he's thinking, which is a good way to think. I mean, it's a good question to ask. It means he's not weaseling.

He's not trying to squeak out of the rigors of Scripture. So let me try to clarify what I think Paul means by husband of one woman. That's important in the way his argument against himself is working and why one-woman man may be a misleading translation. I got a lot of friends that translate it that way, and I've got misgivings about that translation.

Suppose your pastor is single. Now I think that's legitimate. Jesus is single. Paul is single. I think it's legitimate to have a single man for a pastor. Suppose your pastor is single and he commits fornication regularly with only one woman. Would he qualify as being a one-woman man? Well, good grief, Piper.

Technically, yes, and we all know that's not what Paul meant. So translating husband of one woman as one-woman man can get us into difficulty if we're not careful. Paul really is dealing with marriage and whether a man is faithful to his wife, whether he commits adultery. Now, the question then becomes, what do we make of Paul's argument against fornication in 1 Corinthians 6?

Because some might say, well, Paul really does argue that in essence a sexual relationship before marriage is a kind of marriage. And then our young friend might draw the conclusion, well, so I was in a sense married, and I'm not faithful to that girl today by not being married to her officially, not to mention that I can't even get married legitimately if I'm still married to her because that old relationship.

Is that what Paul meant? He says in 1 Corinthians 6:14-18, "The body is not meant for sexual immorality," that is fornication, "but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. Do you not know that your bodies," and here he's getting very specific. He means our sexual organs. "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?" So our body parts are Christ's body parts.

"Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?" And he cries out, "Never!" And then here's the tricky part. He argues like this, "Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her?" And he quotes Genesis 2:24, which is about marriage.

"For as it is written, the two shall become one flesh. But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him." Flee from sexual immorality. That's the end of 1 Corinthians 6:14-18. So Paul portrays the horror of fornication for the Christian as taking the body parts of Christ, because ours are his, and making them body parts of a prostitute.

That's how intimate and profound sexual intercourse is in Paul's apostolic-inspired mind. You become one body with her. What makes the text look ominous for our young friend is that Paul quotes Genesis 2:24, which is a text about marriage. "The two shall become one flesh." So does Paul mean that in essence then the one who fornicates with a prostitute is married to her?

That's what he wonders, so that he would be excluded because of 1 Timothy 3.2. And my answer is no. That's not what Paul means. He could have said that. He doesn't draw that inference or that conclusion. Wow, that would have been powerful. Wow. If he had said that, but he didn't go there.

So what's he doing? I think what he's doing is this. He says, "What makes fornication so horrible is that it takes the one flesh design of marriage and prostitutes it." He prostitutes that part of marriage by stripping it out of the covenant relationship of marriage and treating it as though it was designed for a prostitute.

It's precisely that this is not a marriage that makes the prostitution of Christ's body parts so horrible. The one flesh union designed for marriage, which represents Christ in the church, which is why it's not idolatry to have sex in marriage. Marriage is a representation of Christ in the church.

To take it out of that, out of that sacred covenant with a wife and with Christ and prostitute it in fornication is what makes this fornication so horrible. So I conclude that Paul was not treating fornication as a kind of marriage. There is no covenant formed at all with this prostitute, and that is precisely what makes the sexual similarity to marriage so morally and spiritually ugly.

Therefore, I don't think Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 6 means that our young, repentant, transformed friend should use this text to argue that he's excluded from the eldership simply because of 1 Timothy 3.2, which says he must be the husband of one woman. One last observation, which is also precious.

In this same chapter of 1 Corinthians 6, Paul specifically refers to fornication as something in the church that has been cleansed and forgiven. Verses 9 to 11, "Do not be deceived, the sexually immoral," and he's referring to fornication there because later he refers to adulterers. So he's distinguishing adultery and sexual morality here.

"The sexually immoral will not inherit the kingdom of God, and such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God, to which I say, 'Praise God that any of us can be saved from our sin.'" So my conclusion is that the elders of this young man's church should—and if they're listening to me, greetings in the name of Jesus—the elders of this young man's church should carefully and biblically assess his qualifications for ministry and not let that past sin of fornication be decisive in excluding him.

Thank you, Pastor John. Thank you for joining us today. We tackle a lot of tricky questions on the podcast, obviously, and many of them anonymously, like this question today. You can ask your own question, even anonymously, via email through our online home, AskPastorJohn.com. Well, John 9, verse 3 is a classic text for us at Desiring God, a go-to text for us when it comes to trying to understand God's good design in human disability.

It's about the man born blind. Next time we look at another part of that story, because as you may remember, Jesus healed that blind man by spitting on the ground, mixing his spit with dirt, making mud, applying the paste to the man's blind eyes, and then sending him off to a pool where he was washed and healed.

So why the spit, and why the mud? It's a great question with two answers, up next. I'm your host Tony Rehnke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday.