“Effeminacy” is an old-fashioned word. It was once commonly used. Then it was banished from polite discourse. Recently, the word has enjoyed something of a comeback in evangelical debates over human sexuality and anthropology. Online, it is frequently chosen as a way to toe the line between acceptable apologetics and abusive rhetoric. Some people use the word to be tough. Some use it to be bad.

But “effeminacy,” understood rightly, is also a biblical word and concept, appearing in a text so relevant to modern debates that some detractors have dubbed it a “clobber passage.” The Presbyterian Church in America seems to have recognized just how loaded the word is. The denomination requested a study of 1 Corinthians 6:9 as a part of an Ad Interim Study Committee on Human Sexuality. But surprisingly, the committee relegated this aspect of their commission to a single footnote. They were, perhaps, not quite ready to talk about effeminacy.

But like it or not, people are talking about effeminacy. And like it or not, the word appears in the Christian tradition. So, we would do well to understand it — what it is, what it means for sexual ethics, and whether Christians should use this term today.

Effeminacy in the New Testament

The word “effeminacy” appears in older English translations of 1 Corinthians 6:9. The underlying Greek is malakoi, the plural of malakos. In its immediate context, Paul appears to apply effeminacy to men who engage in homosexual practices. The word is preceded by “adulterers” and then followed by an odd term, perhaps coined by Paul, once translated “abusers of themselves with mankind” but now usually translated as simply “homosexuals” (arsenokoitai).

Commonly, interpreters argue that the two terms (malakoi and arsenokoitai) refer to the passive and active partners of homosexual activity. So, for example, the ESV translates both terms together with the phrase “men who practice homosexuality.” The case for translating 1 Corinthians 6:9 in this way is strong, but it has the obvious weakness of reducing two distinct concepts to one.

It also removes a rhetorical subtlety present in the original. Malakos sometimes did refer to the passive partner in a homosexual relationship, but it did so as a figure of speech. The literal meaning of malakos is “soft.” Thus, when applied to those engaging in certain behavior, this was something of an epithet, analogous to calling someone a “Nancy boy.” Choosing the narrow, and presumably narrowly accurate, option loses this aspect of the way the word functioned. It was not a specific or technical term but rather a broad one that was used precisely to bring to mind a range of other, mostly unfavorable, connotations.

Malakos appears two other times in Scripture, in parallel passages where Jesus is describing the difference between John the Baptist and rich men. Rich men wear “soft [malakois] clothing,” Jesus says in Matthew 11:8. In Luke 7:25, this line is repeated, but an additional description is added: “Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts” (KJV). Soft clothes, then, are luxurious clothes, gorgeous and delicate. Here malakos is also used figuratively. Yes, the clothes are literally soft, but their softness indicates their relationship to luxury. They are fine clothes, expensive clothes. The reason John the Baptist doesn’t wear them is not because he inherently dislikes silk. He doesn’t wear them because he is an ascetic. John does not live a soft life of luxury but rather a hard life of self-denial and self-mastery.

A closely related word in Luke 7:25 is tryphē. Translated there as “luxury,” it also appears in 2 Peter 2:13: “They count it pleasure to revel [tryphēn] in the daytime.” This usage is trickier. The context has to do with pleasure but also with a lack of shame. The sin is committed openly or flagrantly. In his commentary on 2 Peter, John Calvin offers this translation: “luxuriating in their errors.” Tryphē, then, carries connotations of a lack of discipline or constraint. Both malakos and tryphē also could be translated as “effeminate” or “effeminacy.”

Does ‘Effeminate’ Mean Feminine?

Neither malakos nor tryphē carries the linguistic association with the female sex that the English word “effeminacy” does. This might be considered a strength in that it allows contemporary Christians to discuss the moral issue without being immediately pulled into a discussion of the sexes. But the New Testament does use a word that stands opposite of malakos, and this word does carry an association with one’s sex.

That word is andrizomai in 1 Corinthians 16:13. It was once translated as “quit ye like men” (KJV) but is now often rendered “be courageous” (NIV, NLT, NET). Once again, the privileging of a narrow sort of clarity obscures the literal word and its rhetorical force. In context, andrizomai does indicate courage, but it does so after the manner of the contemporary expression “man up.” The word invokes the concept of a man in order to symbolize strength. Interestingly, the next moral duty listed in verse 13 is “be strong.” “Quit ye like men” captures the fact that andrizomai indicates manliness.

Malakos and andreios (the adjectival form of andrizomai) can be seen, then, as opposites — and as corresponding to effeminacy and manliness, respectively. Effeminacy is a soft and indulgent character trait. Manliness is a courage that holds strong under pressure.

Importantly, both of these terms can be applied to both men and women. After all, Paul is writing to a group that includes both men and women when he calls them to “act like men.” One place where this interesting rhetorical convention has been preserved is in the Book of Common Prayer’s baptismal service. After the person, man or woman, is baptized, the minister makes the sign of the cross on his (or her) forehead and says, “[We] do sign him [or her] with the sign of the cross, in token that hereafter he [or she] shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner against sin, the world, and the devil.” Female as well as male Anglicans are called to manfully fight. Andrizomai works the same way. Both men and women are called to “man up.”

Can women be warned against effeminacy, then? That sounds strange to modern ears. Understanding the full range of effeminacy, however, will show that the answer is yes. To be clear, effeminacy is not the same as femininity. And if a woman commits the sin of effeminacy, it is not because she is being overly feminine. Rather, she is abusing or distorting femininity in a way that creates vice. This claim will take some further explaining, and to make it easier to understand, we need to look at what effeminacy has meant in the broader tradition.

Effeminacy, Decadence, and Deviancy

Malakos and other language related to the concept of effeminacy appear widely in ancient literature. Philo of Alexandria and Josephus both use them, as do Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch. As a moral concept, ancient effeminacy could mean physical weakness, mental weakness, cowardice, a failure to live up to one’s duty, luxury, or sexual immorality. In this last meaning, the immorality could appear when the man assumed the role of a woman, and it could also appear when a man prioritized his lust for women over his duties and the pursuit of virtue. A few examples can demonstrate these meanings.

ARISTOTLE

Aristotle defines malakos as “luxury” in his Nicomachean Ethics (7.1.4). By “luxury,” he means indulgence or the lack of self-restraint. He states that the luxurious man is intemperate and beholden to his own passions. He gives in to his desires and violates what he knows to be right. This sort of “softness” can manifest itself in exceeding the bounds of propriety as well as in shrinking away from duty out of fear. Aristotle even applies this vice of softness to those who are not steadfast in their opinions but too quickly abandon them.

PLUTARCH

Plutarch was a Greek philosopher and historian who lived in the first-century Roman empire. Though not a Christian, Plutarch would have been a contemporary of the first generation of Christians, and so his cultural outlook is instructive for the literary and intellectual world of the New Testament. In one of his moral treatises, a character denounces the love of pleasure as “a soft [malakos] life” (The Dialogue on Love, lines 750–51). This soft life involves spending time “in the bosoms and beds of women.” It is criticized for being “devoid of manliness and friendship and inspiration.”

The character speaking these lines is not one of Plutarch’s examples of wisdom, but his words do help to explain what “softness” meant in the first-century Roman empire. It indicated sensuality or pleasure-seeking as its own end. A few lines later, another character states that men who allow themselves to be sexually abused by other men are guilty of “weakness and effeminacy [malakos].” The language used is quite crude, and it clearly has to do with the subordinate member of a male homosexual act.

And so, in Plutarch, effeminacy has to do with sexual profligacy (which is a sort of luxury) and the passive homosexual partner. The notion common to both meanings is that of decadence and forsaking duty. This sort of softness is a pursuit of pleasure that leads to prodigal living and even disgrace.

JOHN CHRYSOSTOM

The early Christian bishop and theologian John Chrysostom uses the term “effeminacy” in largely the same way Plutarch does. Chrysostom applies the word to luxury and describes offenses like “delicate cookery” and “vulgar ostentation.” Under the first class, he includes “making sauces,” and under the second, “superfluous” art — that is, artwork, design, or fashion that exceeds the bounds of necessity and function.

Throughout his argument, Chrysostom twice alludes to men imitating or behaving like women as cases of effeminate luxury. By this, he does not mean that they are presenting themselves as women per se. He is not talking about actual cases of androgyny. Instead, these men were wearing the kind of expensive and luxurious clothing typically associated with women. Chrysostom writes, “When it perverts men to the gestures of women, and causes them by their sandals to grow wanton and delicate, we will set it amidst the things hurtful and superfluous” (Homily 49 on Matthew, section 5).

In this same section, Chrysostom points out that women also should avoid luxurious clothing. Alluding to 1 Timothy 2:9, he says, “In spite of Paul’s prohibiting the married woman to have costly clothing, you extend this effeminacy even to your shoes.” As strange as it sounds, women too could be guilty of effeminacy. Typically, this rhetoric was used against men; men dressed decadently were wearing clothing and jewelry meant for women. But Chrysostom was actually asserting a distinctive ethic for women too. They also were called to reject luxury, to reject effeminacy. Indeed, both men and women should “quit ye like men” and maintain a decorum of moderation and humility.

AUGUSTINE

Another piece of evidence in late antiquity is found in Augustine’s City of God. In book 7, Augustine describes a group of people he calls “the effeminates consecrated to the Great Mother.” These men have “pomaded hair and powdered faces,” and they “glid[e] along with womanish languor” (City of God 7.26). This “Great Mother” is the goddess “Cybele” or “Kybelis.”

Augustine goes on to say that Cybele turns her devotees into eunuchs. This was a real historical phenomenon. The Roman poet Catullus has a work where he describes Attis as being possessed by the spirit of Cybele and castrating himself. These “effeminates,” then, are described as such precisely because of the sexual element in the vice. They have been turned, as it were, into women. They then devote their lives to the service of this goddess and assume a female presentation.

We can see that ancient effeminacy combined elements of luxury or wantonness with sexual deviancy. The sexual deviancy could be effeminate in two ways. First, it could be an indulgence wherein the man “wasted” his strength and virtue. Second, it could be a case where the man took on the role of the woman, usually in an overly elaborate or decadent way. This androgyny was either uniquely cultic or a form of pleasure-seeking and indulgence within male social groups.

THOMAS AQUINAS

The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas discusses effeminacy in his landmark Summa Theologiae. There he interacts with both Aristotle and 1 Corinthians 6 before concluding that the core problem with effeminacy is “withdraw[ing] from good on account of sorrow caused by lack of pleasure, yielding as it were to a weak motion” (ST II-II, q. 138). Thomas states that the opposite of effeminacy is perseverance.

In one of his replies, he also mentions the element of sexual deviancy, but he says that the term “effeminacy” is applied to deviancy by way of custom because the effeminate man has grown soft. Interestingly, Thomas believes this softness is primarily mental and volitional. The man in that case has “yielded” to a “weak motion.” He has not persevered in his duty and calling to be a man but has rather abandoned it for the pursuit of fleshly pleasure.

This understanding of effeminacy brings the two seemingly distinct meanings together. A passive or dominated man and a lecherous or libidinous man form two sides of the same coin. Both are failing in their pursuit of the good. They quit their duty and abandon themselves to vice. They do this, not merely out of ordinary fear, but because they sense a “lack of pleasure” in the ethical struggle.

On a similar note, “manliness” meant a strong and persistent battle against sin. Commenting on the use of andrizomai in 1 Corinthians 16:13, John Calvin summarizes it as “fortitude.” Matthew Henry’s commentary explains it this way: “Show yourselves men in Christ, by your steadiness, by your sound judgment and firm resolution.” If effeminacy is the tendency to fall away in the absence of pleasure, manliness is courageous perseverance through challenging struggle.

Effeminacy Today

This historical understanding of effeminacy can assist contemporary promoters of a renewed masculinity, but it also challenges certain assumptions. The Christian critique of effeminacy does promote strength and perseverance in the face of struggle, but it does not simply criticize perceived “girly men.” A man of slight build with a nasally voice might be effeminate, but those characteristics would not necessarily be what made him so. On the other hand, if a man of that physiognomy overcame his obstacles and achieved virtue, all the while embodying Christian faith, hope, and love, he could prove himself manly. Seeing the whole picture isn’t always easy.

We must always be on guard against simple prejudice. There’s nothing intrinsically effeminate about a man who sings, cooks, plays the piano, or pursues “indoor” vocations. In fact, all of those activities have historically attracted various elite men. Similarly, a woman pursuing intellectual rigor is not violating her femininity, as the example of Mary proves (Luke 10:39).

But terms like “effeminacy” and “manliness” do retain concepts that many today have largely rejected. In order to avoid effeminacy, you must have functioning concepts of cowardice, luxury, virtue, perseverance, struggle, and victory. You must also believe that people and endeavors have godly ends or points of completion that define their nature, value, and success. These terms can then be applied to men and women in more sex-specific forms, but they would do so by defining a manly man as one who acts in accordance with his created nature, in pursuit of godly purpose, persevering in the face of opposition and distraction — from the world, his own flesh, and the devil. He then does so in a masculine mode, or “as a man,” and continues in them.

Additionally, Christian manhood requires other characteristics like meekness, moderation, sobriety, and gravity. A godly man avoids “sinful anger, hatred, envy, desire of revenge; all excessive passions, distracting cares; immoderate use of meat, drink, labor, and recreations” (Westminster Larger Catechism 136). Health and fitness are good things, but they are good things in relationship to other goals. They must enable one to achieve godly ends, including protection, provision, and service. A flashy or excessively “manly” notion of masculinity is actually an artifice standing in place of the real thing. Insofar as these artificial versions of manhood give in to vice by way of the soft motions of indulgence or intemperance, they become “effeminate.”

Retaining the vocabulary of “effeminacy” and “manfulness” in our theological ethics is worth the hard work. While both terms need to be used with care, they capture specific biblical concepts that have held a stable place in ancient and Christian history but are in shorter supply today. Wrestling with their unfamiliar or unconformable associations, especially in the areas of sexuality, can help us appropriately criticize older errors as well as newer ones. It can expand our understanding of the ways the Bible retains features of the ancient world and the ways it transforms them. Finally, understanding these words can help men and women achieve their respective virtuous ends in the body of Christ.

Forty-three years ago today, on October 14, 1979, John Piper felt himself irretrievably called to pastoral ministry. He was on sabbatical, after teaching six years at Bethel College. He was studying Romans 9. Reflecting back on that season, he would say later, in 2002:

As I studied Romans 9 day after day, I began to see a God so majestic and so free and so absolutely sovereign that my analysis merged into worship and the Lord said, in effect, “I will not simply be analyzed, I will be adored. I will not simply be pondered, I will be proclaimed. My sovereignty is not simply to be scrutinized, it is to be heralded. It is not grist for the mill of controversy, it is gospel for sinners who know that their only hope is the sovereign triumph of God’s grace over their rebellious will.”

In 2019, on the fortieth anniversary of John’s October 14 call to the pastorate, Justin Taylor published an article at Desiring God called “This Word Must Be Preached,” which quotes extensively from John’s 1800-word journal he wrote longhand that night — and very much relates to our second session here tonight. (See here for Part 1.)

First, Justin comments: “It is remarkable how realistic [John] was that night. He knew himself well.” Then a quote from John’s journal:

I know, really know, I would despair as a pastor. I would despair that my people are not where I want them to be, I would despair at ruptured study and writing goals, I would despair at barren administrative details. [But he asked himself:] “Who shall shepherd the flock of God? People who love barrenness? People who feel no flame to study God and write it out? People who weep not over the tares and the choking wheat? Is the criterion for judging one’s fitness for the ministry that one feels no pain in the mechanics of ‘running a church’? Is the calling so managerial in our day that the Word burning to be spoken and lived and applied is no qualification?

Second, another quote from John’s journal, contrasting himself with his father, who was a traveling evangelist: “My heart is not in one time shots or one week shots. I am not a gifted evangelist. My heart leans hard to regularity of feeding [that’s the work of pastor-elders]. I believe little in the injection method to health. I believe in the long steady diet of rich food in surroundings of love.”

Third, Justin comments about John that “he had a hunger to be the direct instrument of the Word.” For John, that meant being a local church pastor, not a seminary professor. He wanted to be “a vessel of [God’s] Word” in the church. So he left the academy for the pastorate. He became a preacher, but he emphatically did not cease to be a teacher. Because pastors are teachers.

Two Main Tasks

In our second session tonight, we turn to the two qualifications for the eldership that correspond most directly with the two main tasks of the elders. The two tasks are feeding and leading the flock. The two qualification, then, are “able to teach” and “sober-minded.” And we’ll end with how all of us, young and old (and perhaps especially young, and those aspiring to the work) might grow in these two central qualifications.

Feeding the Flock (Able to Teach)

Perhaps you can imagine a scenario in which a man is being considered for eldership, and the question comes, Is he “able to teach”? Let’s say the man is not a known teacher. But the one who is advocating for his candidacy responds, “It’s not his strength. He’s rarely willing to do public speaking. But if you put a gun to his head . . . . Such a minimalistic understanding is not what Paul means by “able to teach.” Rather, what he’s after, and what we should be after is the more maximalist assertion: “He’s the kind of man who will hardly stop teaching — even if you put a gun to his head.”

Pastors and elders, paid and unpaid, fulltime and lay, are to be teachers. “Able to teach” (one word in the Greek, didaktikos), we might say, is the most central of the elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3 (listed eighth of the fifteen) and also the most distinctive. The single qualification that most plainly sets the pastor-elders apart from the deacons is “able to teach” — or perhaps even better, “apt or prone to teach.”

Such teaching bent and ability in pastors is not to be minimal, but maximal. We want the kind of man who will hardly stop teaching, even if you put a gun to his head. As he learns, he wants to teach. As he studies, he thinks about teaching. He breathes teaching. We might say he’s a teacher at heart. He loves to teach, with all the planning and discipline and patience and energy and exposure to criticism that good teaching requires.

Given to Teaching

A pastor who is didaktikos, “able to teach,” is not just “able to teach if necessary,” but rather “eager to teach when possible.” He’s bent to teach — not only able in terms of skill but also eager in terms of proclivity.

In English, we have the word didactic, built on the Greek didachē for teaching. But we don’t have an easy equivalent for the Greek adjective didaktikos. Maybe we need something like didactive or teachative. If talkative refers to someone who is “fond of or given to talking,” teachative would mean someone “fond of or given to teaching.”

The point is that New Testament leaders — the pastor-elders — are teachers. Christianity is a teaching movement. Jesus was the consummate teacher. He chose and discipled his men to be teachers who discipled others also (Matthew 28:19; 2 Timothy 2:2). After his ascension, the apostles spoke on Christ’s behalf and led the early church through teaching, and when their living voices died, their writings became the church’s ongoing polestar, with Old Testament Scripture, for teaching the churches. And so, fitting with the very nature of the Christian faith, Christ appoints men who are teachative, didaktikos, which entails at least three important realities we would be wise to keep in mind today: we look for men who are equipped to teach, effective at teaching, and eager to teach.

Equipped to Teach

First of all, a man may be off-the-charts teachative, and be little more than a liability if he has not been sufficiently equipped in sound doctrine. The miracle of new birth does not imply any instantaneous miracles of equipping for leadership. Now, we might grant a kind of miracle status to any sinner coming, in time, to have genuinely sound theology, but this would be a long-range miracle worked out through diligent training over time, not the endowment of a mere moment.

As Walter Henrichsen wrote almost 50 years ago (in 1974), disciples are made, not born. Jesus spoke about a righteous scribe being “trained for the kingdom of heaven . . . [he] brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52). “A disciple is not above his teacher,” he says, “but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). To become a Christian requires no training, just faith: “to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:5). But one does not become a teacher (nor practically holy) by faith alone. Rather, grace trains us, in sanctification “to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions” (Titus 2:12), and in those whom Christ gives his church as pastor-teachers, he sees to their being “trained in the words of the faith” (1 Timothy 4:6).

Training is necessary for maturity (Hebrews 5:14), and training requires the discipline of persisting in momentary discomfort, even pain, for the reward set before us (Hebrews 12:11). So when we emphasize, in pastors, the necessity of proclivity and ability to teach, we do not overlook a critical component of Christian teachers: training. Pastors must be equipped in sound doctrine to teach sound doctrine. It doesn’t happen without work.

Effective at Teaching

Second, the pastor-elders of the church must also be effective teachers. That is, they must be skillful — able in the sense of good. It’s not enough if they want to teach, and have been trained in sound doctrine, but they’re not any good at teaching. Then the church becomes a sitting duck, or unprotected flock. If the pastors aren’t effective teachers, it’s only a matter of time until wolves carry the day and feast on the lambs.

“If the pastors aren’t effective teachers, it’s only a matter of time until wolves carry the day and feast on the lambs.”

And so Paul says, as his culminating qualification in the Titus 1 list, the pastor-elder “must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). That is, he must know “the trustworthy word,” and be trained in it, and genuinely “hold firm” to it. But then commences the work of teaching in its twofold sense: feeding the flock (“give instruction in sound doctrine”) and defending the flock (“rebuke those who contradict it”). And if the pastors and elders are poor or ineffective teachers, the sheep go hungry or get eaten.

So pastors and elders, as a team, must be effective teachers — that is, effective in the context of the particular local church where they are called. They need not compete with the world’s best orators on popular podcasts or television. But they must be effective teachers of their people, in their context. When push comes to shove, the pastors-teachers must get the job done, or the wolves take the sheep.

Eager to Teach

Third, we come back to where we started and the heart of the teaching qualification, that is, the heart of a teacher. We need men who are eager to teach. Not just men willing to have their arm bent once in a while to fill a slot. But men who are teachers. The pastor-teachers.

“Remember your leaders,” says Hebrews 13:7, “those who spoke to you the word of God.” Hebrews could assume that their leaders were those who spoke God’s word to them, because their leaders were teachers.

Christianity is a word-critical, teaching-critical faith. The leaders teach. And good teachers, in time and with sufficient maturation, come to lead. The pastor-elders, then, are not only called to lead, or govern, but first and foremost to labor in word and teaching. And since the work, at its heart, is the work of teaching, we want men who want to teach. They are eager to do it. (And brothers, this too can be cultivated.)

Such didactive men think like teachers, not judges. Their orientation toward the church is not mainly as those rendering verdicts but envisioning possibilities, providing fresh perspective and information, faithfully teaching the Scriptures, making persuasive arguments, patiently reviewing and restating and illustrating, and praying for God’s miraculous work in life-change.

Is it not amazing that when Paul speaks into how Timothy should carry himself in the midst of the conflict with false teachers in the Ephesian church, he says, “the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:24–25)? Look at what company “able to teach” keeps: not quarrelsome but kind, patient, gentle — not apart from correction, but gentle in “correcting his opponents.”

Leading the Sheep (Able to Govern)

Now, pastors are not only teachers. As overseers, they “watch over” the flock. As elders, they counsel and guide the people. As shepherds, they muster the collective forethought to envision where to go next for green pastures and still waters and lead the sheep in that direction, and wield the “comfort” of their rod to crack the skulls of wolves to protect the sheep.

So, not only does Christ gift his church with leaders who have such a proclivity, being teachative, but he also — strange as it may seem to us — puts these teachers in charge as the church’s lead officers. The elders feed and lead. Teaching and oversight are paired in 1 Thessalonians 5:12 and 1 Timothy 5:17, and 1 Timothy 2:12 provides that particularly memorable coupling of the elders’ teaching with their exercising authority in the local church, particularly in the gathered assembly:

I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. (then, three verses later, those who exercise authority through teaching: the elders)

“Jesus is more interested in the church’s effectiveness than its efficiency.”

Amazingly, the risen Christ, in building his church on his terms, not the world’s, is so audacious as to appoint teachers to lead, which is both surprising (because teachers, as a group, can be so idealistic and inefficient) and fitting (because Christianity is a teaching movement). That Christ made teachers to be pastors (and pastors, teachers) confirms what a few sharp souls might have suspected all along: that Jesus is more interested in the church’s effectiveness than its efficiency.

So, pastors teach. They are, at heart, teachers. The plurality of elders is, in an importance sense, a team of teachers, who also govern. The call to pastoral ministry is not for specialized administrators of large church departments. Nor is it a call for brawlers and pugilists, more apt to quarrel than to teach. Pastors teach, and are the kind of men who will graciously hardly cease. Even if you put a gun to their heads.

Sober-Mindedness

Now, what are we to say about their governing?

If “able to teach” (didaktikos), as we’ve said, is the most central and most distinctive of the elder qualifications, “sober-minded” might be the most underrated, or underappreciated.

I remember, on several occasions, sitting as an elder, among elders, brainstorming names for future additions to the council. By God’s grace, the voicing of some names elicited words of praise. Sometimes there was largely enthusiasm, with some minor misgivings. On occasion, it seemed as if many of us intuited that “something’s not right” or “doesn’t resonate” when thinking of this man as an elder. Over time, I came to learn that often the language we were groping for was right here in the eldership qualifications: sober-minded.

It is a remarkable turn of events that Jesus appoints a team of teachers, in essence, to lead his local churches.

However — this is where we come especially to “sober-minded” — Jesus does not call these pastor-teachers to teaching alone. He calls the pastor-elders, under the gathered assembly of saints, to lead the people — leadership that requires they be, both individually and collectively, sober-minded.

Level-Headed, Not Imbalanced

As I said, of the fifteen pastor-elder qualifications in 1 Timothy 3, sober-mindedness might be the most underrated. Not only is teaching (with preaching) central to the pastors’ work, but also vital is “exercising oversight” (1 Peter 5:2). Pastor-elders not only “labor among you” as teachers but “are over you in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 5:12). They both feed and lead. The elder “must manage his own household well” because, as a team, the elders are charged with caring for God’s household, the church (1 Timothy 3:4–5, 15). Not only are pastors who preach and teach well worthy of honor — and “double honor” (remuneration) when laboring at the work as a bread-winning vocation — but also as governors, that is, “the elders who rule well” (1 Timothy 5:17). The pastor-elders teach and rule, that is, lead or govern. And to do so requires a kind of spiritual acuity the New Testament calls “sober-mindedness.”

“Men who are sober-minded are level-headed and balanced. They are responsive, without being reactive.”

Men who are sober-minded are level-headed and balanced. They are responsive, without being reactive. They are not given to extremes, not suckers for myths and speculation and conspiracy theories, and not dragged into silly controversies. They are able to discern what emphases and preoccupations would compromise the stewardship (1 Timothy 1:4) at the heart of their work, and they stay grounded in what’s most important and enduring. Keeping the gospel “of first importance” as their center (1 Corinthians 15:3), they are able, like increasingly few modern adults, to “keep [their] head in all situations” (1 Timothy 4:5, NIV).

Together, the team of sober-minded elders is able to navigate complicated challenges, like church-size dynamics and generational dynamics and, perhaps above all, issues of timing in the life of the local church. Many, young and old, are able to see various problems, and feel various tensions, in church life, but the pastor-elders are those with the sober-mindedness, and the accompanying “superpower of patience” to know how and when to address the challenges. Sober-minded pastor-elders, together as a group, figure out how to give Caesar his (tiny) due without robbing Christ of any of his. Together they keep the church on mission (Matthew 28:19), keep the gospel central, and demonstrate that the essence of leadership is not personal privilege and preference but self-giving, self-humbling, and self-sacrifice for the church’s good.

Such sober-mindedness, without doubt, is also critical for teaching — for determining what to teach and when and how — but such spiritual acuity especially maps on to the call to govern or lead, and the untiring vigilance it requires. “Be sober-minded; be watchful” (1 Peter 5:8; also 1 Thessalonians 5:6). “Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers” (Acts 20:28). The pastor-elders are those who “are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Hebrews 13:17). So they must be sober-minded (1 Timothy 3:2) — in fact, “always sober-minded” (2 Timothy 4:5).

How to Get a Sober Mind

In Acts 6, we are not yet dealing with pastors and deacons, but apostles and “the seven.” But we can see a kind of analog here for what was to come in local congregations. As “the seven” were appointed to “serve tables” that the apostles might not “give up preaching the word of God” (Acts 6:2), so local-church pastor-elders have a particular calling to lead and feed the flock — that is, “devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word” (Acts 6:4). Word and prayer.

We teach the word to feed the church. And sober-minded men pray to God, and take counsel with each other, to lead the church in the ups and downs on the raging seas of real life. It will not be enough to have balanced thinkers who do not pray (besides, prayerlessness would betray their imbalance). Nor would it be enough to have prayerful men without sober minds. We need both prayer and prudence, even as we need both teaching and leading. And Christ appoints that his local church leaders be such prayerful, sober-minded teachers.

All well and good, you might say, but what about the gaffs in my own sober-mindedness that I’m aware of — not to mention the many of which I do not even know? Whether already a pastor-elder, or aspiring to the office, or not, How might I become more sober-minded?

The good news is that sobering our minds is part of the work the Holy Spirit is doing on all those who are in Christ. And in particular this is work he does, over time, through the word of God, Old Testament and New. However naturally balanced and level-headed you might be, the word of God is critical in giving us real balance in a destabilizing world and sobering us up to what really matters in God’s economy. Sober-mindedness is not a miracle God does in just a moment, but the effect of thousands of quiet, early morning miracles over his word day after day, for years.

In the days to come, as in the last two thousand years, the church needs men who keep their heads under pressure, in conflict and controversy. And in just the normal, steady-state life of the church, we need level-headed, wise, spiritually and emotionally intelligent leaders rather than those who are impulsive, imbalanced, and reactive because pastor-elders are not just God-appointed teachers but God-appointed governors. Such men the Spirit loves to produce through years of quite Scripture meditation and real-life accountability in the local church. And such men, then, years in the making, the risen Christ loves to give to his church to feed it through faithful, effective teaching, and guide it through patient, composed, reasonable team leadership.

Which leads to our concluding focus on how a young or aspiring pastor-elder might go about pursuing growth and development in their teaching.

Developing as a Pastor-Teacher

With this short list, I’m assuming eagerness. Without some initial aspiration or eagerness, there would not be interest in growth. So assuming some measure of eagerness, here are six avenues to consider in seeking to develop yourself as a teacher:

1. Know the Word himself, that is, Jesus.

How? In the word itself, the gospel. How? Through the word itself, Scripture. So know the Word (Jesus) in the word (gospel) through the word (Scripture).

Read, study, and meditate on the Bible — and all the Bible. Those who lead and aspire to lead the church would be wise to have all the biblical text pass before their eyes every calendar year. Obviously there will be (many) passages you not only read but study and meditate on and teach on, perhaps multiple times in a year, but reading through the Bible with some plan each year at least lets each biblical text pass before you each year. As you do, you’re increasingly understanding Scripture as a whole — and most of all, knowing and enjoying Jesus in it.

2. Self-educate in the information age.

This is a step in equipping. Leverage the amazing availability of books, messages, and essays (meaty articles). Perhaps some limited social media exposure would help you be aware of new books, essays, and articles, but I would highly caution you against any more than a pretty modest, controlled portion of social media.

Beware the radicalizing effects of social media. Algorithms are no friend to the pursuit of sober-mindedness.

3. Pursue some formal program of training.

This is a distinct step in equipping, that goes beyond self-educating. I’m talking about some curriculum and course of study, designed by someone other than yourself, to develop in knowledge and skill, and fill in areas you’ve never gravitated to studying on your own.

4. Take what at-bats you can and make them count.

Now, we’re moving to effectiveness which grows, over time, with the Spirit’s help and hard work. You need hundreds of at-bats, not dozens. Teaching, like singing (not like athletics), is a life-skill.

5. Always keep learning and be ready.

After Paul says “preach the word” in 2 Timothy 4:2, the very next charge is this: “be ready in season and out of season.” Then again in verse 5: “always be sober-minded.”

And this for those who continue to learn and grow. In 1 Timothy 4, after just telling Timothy to “devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching,” Paul says, “Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:13–15). Our people ought to see our progress, our growth — in all areas, but particularly in our teaching. Which means — this should be encouraging — you grow in teaching. It is not fundamentally a gift you have or do not.

6. Rejoice more in being saved than in being a fruitful teacher.

We come back to Luke 10:20: “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you [as your teaching ability and effectiveness improves and matures], but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” I don’t think Jesus means this absolutely, as if there is not any holy joy to be had in faithful, fruitful teaching. But we dare not let the joy of teaching the faith eclipse the joy of the faith itself.

Brothers, rejoice most that your names are written in heaven. Being a Christian is ten thousand times more important, and sweeter, than being a pastor-teacher.

Audio Transcript

We’re back, and we’re back into an online controversy — a “brew-haha,” as it was called. Pastor John, on September 30 you tweeted about coffee. You posted Hebrews 12:28, which says, “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” And in light of this reverent, awe-filled vision for our worship, you posed this open question: “Can we reassess whether Sunday coffee-sipping in the sanctuary fits?”

As I mentioned last time, the tweet was loved and hated and spread all over the Internet to the point that, after a couple weeks, it had 1,000 retweets, 1,500 comments, 3,000 likes, 2.7 million views, and feature articles online from Fox News here in the States and the Daily Mail in the UK. None of which you saw, which we talked about last time, on Monday.

Now, there’s a lot behind that tweet, a whole worldview really. So, we are building out the context behind it, and you are talking about how to build and shape a church with this “reverential vibe” in everything that happens on Sunday morning. Last time, you signaled that you wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of helping church leaders move their church away from casual worship toward something better and more fitting to what Hebrews, and all of the Bible, calls for. So, get practical, and pick up the discussion for us at this point.

I argued last time that sipping coffee in the holiest hour of congregational worship does not fit with the reverence and awe that Hebrews 12:28 calls for. “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,” Hebrews says.

But I argued that sipping coffee is not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that people and leaders don’t have a heart that resonates with what I mean by “reverence and awe” and the holiness, the sacredness of that hour of congregational worship on Sunday morning (usually). Those realities are not prominent in their mind and heart, those reverent realities. They know those words: reverence, awe. They know the words, but the words don’t have compelling existential content, with the kind of serious joy that makes people eager for reverence and awe. They’re just words.

And I argued that you don’t solve that problem by creating external rules. You solve it by awakening internal, heartfelt reverence. So, things that are unfitting don’t get outlawed; they just fall away. I think that’s the way I tried to do it. I don’t think I ever laid down rules for 33 years of preaching.

What I’d like to do here now is to point a way, a possible way forward for pastors to lead the church gradually — say, over five to ten years. You’ve got to be patient to move from the atmosphere of a casual, chipper, coffee-sipping, entertainment-oriented gathering to a more seriously joyful, reverent, deeply satisfying encounter with God. So, maybe in this episode, Tony, we could talk just for a few minutes about the kind of preaching that would lead in that direction.

Developing a Godward Mindset

But before I say that, the pastor’s mindset overall should be that it’s fitting for one hour a week, or an hour and a half, that the people of God meet him with a kind of radical Godward focus that has weightiness to it and seriousness to it, and that this weightiness and seriousness of God-centeredness become the most satisfying experience in our people’s lives. That’s the mindset we’ve got to have: “I want to do this in a way so that they love this, they want this, they come for this. This is not tolerated — it’s desired.” That’s the mindset.

We will never out-entertain the world. I just need to settle that. We’ll never out-entertain the world, nor should we try, because we have something infinitely better, something our souls were made for.

And most of our people don’t know this. They don’t know what’s better than the fun they have in watching videos and other kinds of entertainment. They just don’t know. They’ve never tasted the real thing. Something profoundly stabilizing, strengthening, refining, and satisfying at the depths of our being is what people long for, and they don’t know what they’re longing for until they’re shown it over time.

So, here are five appeals to pastors with regard to preaching.

1. Build Bible-people.

Rivet the people’s attention on the Bible, the very words of the Bible. Deal in great realities, and show them those realities from the text. Build trust in the Bible. Build trust in yourself as a Bible man, so that people say, “We can trust him because he’s a Bible man.”

Some people will leave the church because of this orientation; it’s too frightening and threatening to submit to the Bible like this. Others are hungry for this, and they’re going to come. Over time, seek to bring into being a people whose mindset is self-consciously and happily under the Bible’s authority. Seek to create a people who measure everything by the Bible. Every thought, every emotion, every word, every action, put through the sieve of Bible teaching — and what the Bible really teaches about everything.

The way you handle the Bible and the glories you see in it will bring about this kind of congregation. They’re not their own. They belong to Christ, and his word is their life and their law. That’s what needs to come into being through your Bible-saturated preaching.

2. Make God the dominant reality.

Make the glory of God and all that he is for us in Jesus the main reality people sense over the years, as they hear you preach week in and week out: “God is the main reality here. God is big. God is weighty. God is precious. God is satisfying. God is near. Don’t mess with God. God loves us.” I mean, it’s just a massive, weighty vision of God. Make the greatness and beauty and worth of God the dominant reality.

Be amazed, pastor, be amazed at God continually — that God simply is, that he just is, without beginning. This blows the mind of every four-year-old, right? “Who made God, Daddy?” the child asks. “Nobody made God,” responds the father. “Woah.” Eyes get big. “He just always was there.” God is absolute reality. All else, from galaxies to subatomic particles, is secondary. Everything we see is secondary.

God is the primary reality. Help your people to see this and feel this, that God relates to everything in their lives, all the time, as the main thing. He is the main thing in their lives. He’s the supreme treasure, the main value, the brightest hope, the one they are all willing to live for and die for.

3. Tremble at God’s wrath.

Make sure that the ugliness of the disease of sin in us and in the world and the fury of the wrath of God against that disease are felt by your people. God’s grace, precious grace, will never be amazing — not the way it should be — if our people do not tremble at the majesty of God’s transcendent purity and holy wrath against sin. If they do not feel the fitness of the outpouring of the cup, of the fury of his wrath against sin, they will never be amazed that they’re saved.

This is one of the main contributors to the happiness of serious reverence. It’s paradoxical, I know, that you would have a high, holy, trembling view of God’s wrath be the main contributor to the happiness of the seriousness of reverence. But it is so.

The 1,500-degree fire of the building from which we have just been snatched by the firemen can still be seen. We see it. We feel it. We see the smoke. We hear the crackle. And the trembling of our unspeakably happy thankfulness is anything but casual.

4. Exalt Christ and his work.

Exalt Christ in his majesty and lowliness, in his suffering and resurrection, and in the unimaginable riches of what he purchased for us. Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Every single good that God’s elect receive, from now to eternity, is owing to the blood of Jesus Christ. Knowing that I don’t deserve this and what it cost him makes me tremble in my ecstasy.

5. Wonder over the new birth.

Finally, teach your people the miracle of their own conversion. Nobody knows from experience the glory of the miracle of new birth. We only know the wonder of the new birth from Scripture.

“Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ . . . and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5–6) — nobody knows this. Nobody knows this stupendous reality from experience. We know it because God tells us it is so.

We have to teach our people that they are supernatural beings. Most people come into the sanctuary feeling very natural, right? We have to help them feel another way: “You’re a miracle. You’re a walking resurrection from the dead. You’re not merely natural anymore. This is not a moment of gathering natural people. Our faith, which is our life, is a miracle. God created it. It is trust. Our saving faith is trust in a supremely treasured Savior and Lord.”

May I venture to say that preaching like this will, over time, create in your people an eagerness to encounter God in his word in a way that will make coffee-sipping seem out of place?