“Disqualified” means is that…conduct, traits, or sins come to light in the elder’s life that are not in keeping with the qualifications, and the elders realize that the person is no longer qualified…When that happens, the person is no longer a pastor or elder.

I’m always ultimately thankful when the Lord uncovers things that are hidden. God is light, which means he reveals. Sin exists in darkness, which means it hides. When God causes things to come to the light, he does so to expose, change, warn, judge, and transform. While having sin exposed is never pleasant, it does always lead to God’s glory being vindicated.
With that said, a few questions I was asked at church yesterday which I want to answer today and tomorrow here:

What does it mean that a pastor has disqualified himself?
How does that happen?
Why would God allow a pastor to fall morally?

I’ll cover the first two today, and the third tomorrow.
What does it mean that a pastor has disqualified himself?
The term “disqualified” comes from 1 Corinthians 9:27 where Paul says that as a pastor and preacher he takes care to maintain his self-discipline so that, after preaching to others, he does not himself become disqualified.
While 1 Corinthians was written before 1 Timothy, the concept of elder qualifications were already in Paul’s mind. He understood that the gospel is validated from the transformed lives of its ministers. The holiness of preachers is foundational to the equipping of the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12). In fact, the lack of holiness of some of the leaders in the church in Corinth was responsible for much of the turmoil in the church (1 Corinthians 5).
This is why Paul eventually lays out what “qualified” means for elders. In 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, he lists qualifications of elders, preachers, and deacons. Some of them are general—“above reproach” and “blameless” are examples of these general qualifications (1 Timothy 3:2, 10). Then there are more specific qualifications—“one-woman man” or “not a drunkard” are examples of those.
Nowhere does the New Testament teach that everyone who meets the qualifications should be an elder, but the New Testament does clearly teach that everyone who is an elder needs to meet those qualifications.
The typical way a person becomes an elder is by expressing to the other elders their desire to be one (1 Timothy 3:1). Then over a period of time that person’s life is examined. As their leadership grows in the church, and as they shepherd God’s people, their ability is tested (1 Timothy 3:10; 5:22). Eventually the elders might get to a place where they affirm the person as a fellow elder. This act might look different in different congregations (congregational vote, public affirmation, laying on of hands, etc.). But the bottom line in every congregation is that the act proclaims that the church finds this person “elder qualified.” They are a one-woman man, their household is in order, they are gentle, they manage their money well, they are hospitable, and so forth.
What “disqualified” means is that sometime after that, conduct, traits, or sins come to light in the elder’s life that are not in keeping with the qualifications, and the elders realize that the person is no longer qualified. They have become “disqualified.” When that happens, the person is no longer a pastor or elder.
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We must train Christians and even ourselves to know—and to defend—the law of God in all its fullness. But we must also understand how the indicatives of God’s Word ground and inform those imperatives, lest the message that we bring to a dying world not be as compelling or beautiful as it ought to be.

Given the intensity of the unfolding ethical crisis in the Western world today, the church must redouble its efforts to learn doctrine. We, of course, must continue to encourage Christians to live out the Christian life and to speak out in favor of God’s gift of marriage and God’s creation of men and women in His image. We must thoughtfully address the sad fact that public knowledge of the chief end of man is systematically suppressed in a world where people are assaulted, aborted, and consumed with fine food, junk food, more sex, better screens, free drugs, and worldly dreams. But we especially need doctrine.
J. Gresham Machen wrote his classic book a century ago when the church was facing, among other things, enormous ethical challenges, some of them greater than he himself could conceive. In his day, ministers posing as prophets insisted that the real task of the church was to address the urgent need for improved democracy, civility, and moral reform. He himself insisted that a faithful church, especially a church in crisis, must believe and teach doctrine.
But why doctrine? Before and since Machen’s day, the church, especially in the face of social turmoil and ethical ambiguity, has often been tempted with tastier-looking options than Christian doctrine. Some teachers insist that the church has no creed but the Bible. People in the pew have no need for doctrinal excess and the subtlety of seventeenth-century confessions or catechisms. This has a certain plausibility. And as Machen says, speaking of the common man in the pew, “Since it has never occurred to him to attend to the subtleties of the theologians, he has that comfortable feeling which always comes to the churchgoer when someone else’s sins are being attacked.” But as Machen explains, after one hears about the dead orthodoxy of the creeds or the Puritans, and then turns to read the Westminster Confession of Faith or John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, “one has turned from shallow modern phrases to a ‘dead orthodoxy’ that is pulsating with life in every word.” What is more, Machen points out, under the guise of critiquing crusty old confessions, those opposed to doctrine are often opposing the Bible and its most basic teachings. And, we might add, those teachers most opposed to doctrine often set themselves up as the standard to follow.
Machen was principally dealing with people who had devious motives for opposing doctrine. They claimed to oppose doctrine in general because it was easier to sell than the honest admission that they had problems with some doctrines in particular: the virgin birth of Christ, His bodily resurrection, and more. But others have opposed doctrine because they are trying to follow Jesus, and Jesus Himself “just told stories.” Some scholars have added that this is the main approach of the whole Bible: it presents narrative and poetry, not systematic theology. Certainly narrative—or better, history—is important for Christians. We have a historical religion: Jesus taught this in the way that He spoke about the Old Testament; early Christians valued this, as we can see in Luke’s explanation of his own research; and the Apostle Paul announced this when he reminded the Corinthians of the historicity of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1–8).
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“What God has joined together” implies that marriage is not merely a human agreement but a relationship in which God changes the status of a man and a woman from being single (they are no longer two) to being married (one flesh). From the moment they are married, they are unified in a mysterious way that belongs to no other human relationship, having all the God-given rights and responsibilities of marriage that they did not have before. Being “one flesh” includes the sexual union of a husband and wife (see Gen. 2:24), but it is more than that because it means that they have left their parents’ household (“a man shall leave his father and his mother,” Gen. 2:24) and have established a new family, such that their primary human loyalty is now to each other, before anyone else.

All commentary sections adapted from the ESV Study Bible.
1. Ephesians 5:22–27
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Read More
The first example of general submission (Eph. 5:21) is illustrated as Paul exhorts wives to submit to their husbands (Eph. 5:22–24, 33). Husbands, on the other hand, are not told to submit to their wives but to love them (Eph. 5:25–33). Paul’s first example of general submission from Eph. 5:21 is the right ordering of the marriage relationship (see also Col. 3:18; 1 Pet. 3:1–7). The submission of wives is not like the obedience children owe parents, nor does this text command all women to submit to all men (to your own husbands, not to all husbands!). Both genders are equally created in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–28) and heirs together of eternal life (Gal. 3:28–29). This submission is in deference to the ultimate leadership of the husband for the health and harmonious working of the marriage relationship.
The focus in these verses is on Christ, for husbands do not “sanctify” their wives or “wash” them of their sins, though they are to do all in their power to promote their wives’ holiness. “Sanctify” here means “to consecrate into the Lord’s service through cleansing, washing of water.” This might be a reference to baptism, since it is common in the Bible to speak of invisible, spiritual things (in this case, spiritual cleansing) by pointing to an outward physical sign of them (see Rom. 6:3–4). There may also be a link here to Ezek. 16:1–13, where the Lord washes infant Israel, raises her, and eventually elevates her to royalty and marries her, which would correspond to presenting the church to himself in splendor at his marriage supper (see also Ezek. 36:25; Rev. 19:7–9; 21:2, 9–11). without blemish. The church’s utter holiness and moral perfection will be consummated in resurrection glory, but is derived from the consecrating sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
2. Genesis 2:18
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Read More
“Not good” is a jarring contrast to Gen. 1:31; clearly, the situation here has not yet arrived to “very good.” “I will make him” can also be translated “I will make for him,” which explains Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 11:9. In order to find the man a helper fit for him, God brings to him all the livestock, birds, and beasts of the field. None of these, however, proves to be “fit for” the man. “Helper” (Hb. ‘ezer’) is one who supplies strength in the area that is lacking in “the helped.” The term does not imply that the helper is either stronger or weaker than the one helped. “Fit for him” or “matching him” (cf. ESV footnote) is not the same as “like him”: a wife is not her husband’s clone but complements him.

3. Matthew 19:4–6
“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” Read More
“What God has joined together” implies that marriage is not merely a human agreement but a relationship in which God changes the status of a man and a woman from being single (they are no longer two) to being married (one flesh). From the moment they are married, they are unified in a mysterious way that belongs to no other human relationship, having all the God-given rights and responsibilities of marriage that they did not have before. Being “one flesh” includes the sexual union of a husband and wife (see Gen. 2:24), but it is more than that because it means that they have left their parents’ household (“a man shall leave his father and his mother,” Gen. 2:24) and have established a new family, such that their primary human loyalty is now to each other, before anyone else. Jesus avoids the Pharisaic argument about reasons for divorce and goes back to the beginning of creation to demonstrate God’s intention for the institution of marriage. It is to be a permanent bond between a man and a woman that joins them into one new union that is consecrated by physical intercourse (Gen. 2:24).
4. Colossians 3:18
Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Read More
Instead of telling wives to “obey” (Gk. hypakouō), as was typical in Roman households, Paul appeals to them to “submit” (Gk. hypotassō), based on his conviction that men have a God-given leadership role in the family. The term suggests an ordering of society in which wives should align themselves with and respect the leadership of their husbands (see Eph. 5:22–33).
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