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WHAT TO DO WHEN CONFLICT ARISES - VIII
Titus 3:9-11; 1 Tim. 5:19-22
Bob Bonner
October 25, 2009
A person’s reputation is often not only important to the individual, but it is also important to those persons closely related to him. Most of us want to be thought of as good-willed, good-intentioned people whom others can trust. We don’t like it when others slander us or spread rumors or half truths about us or our family members.
Nobody knows more about my weaknesses than my family. And nobody knows their weaknesses better than I. Yet because we are family, we try to guard or protect one another’s reputation. Nobody is perfect. We know that, but love does cover a multitude of sins. In loving this way, we are not trying to deceive anybody about who we really are. But when you love someone, you want to give them the benefit of the doubt and the freedom to fail and to learn and to grow from their mistakes without causing them to lose face before others. You want to present them in their best light, not their weakest. So family members who really care about one another protect one another’s reputation. And that should be true of the church family as well, especially as it concerns the reputation of its leadership.
This morning as we continue our study of what to do when conflict arises, we specifically want to look at 1 Timothy 5:19-22 to see what is supposed to be done when an elder is accused of sin. What is the church leadership to do if another leader sins against his brother? Do you hide his sin in order to protect his reputation, or do you bring to light every failure or rumor of failure a leader makes? 1Timothy 5:19-22 gives us some helpful guidance in trying to answer these questions.
Just prior to our passage, the Apostle Paul was giving Timothy, his associate, some instructions concerning the honor that elders, the leadership of the church, should receive. In contrast to that, Paul now addresses a situation when an elder has possibly done something wrong or dishonorable and what the leadership is supposed to do in such a case. Let’s begin by reading 1 Timothy 5:19-22.
19Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of
two or three witnesses. 20Those who continue in sin, rebuke in the
presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning. 21I
solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus and of
His chosen angels, to maintain these principles without bias, doing
nothing in a spirit of partiality. 22Do not lay hands upon anyone too
hastily and thereby share responsibility for the sins of others; keep
yourself free from sin.
As we begin looking at verse 19, we will see Paul is going to answer the question, “As a church family, and in particular as a group of elders, what do we do when someone, anyone including another elder, makes an accusation against another elder?” Obviously, being an elder does not require that the individual be perfect or have arrived spiritually in every area of his life. An elder is still human and quite capable of sinning and will need correction just like any other brother or sister in Christ.
One would certainly hope, as on the island of Crete where Titus was to appoint elders from what was a pool of relatively baby Christians, that his appointees would be men of relatively higher integrity than others in their church family. If you remember our study of the guidelines listed for the qualifications of an elder in Titus 1, they were not quite as strict as those given to Timothy in 1 Timothy 3. The reason is that the church at Ephesus had been longer in existence and the relative maturity of the elders was greater than the newbies on the island of Crete. So perfection, or living a sinless lifestyle, is not a qualification for being an elder.
Let’s further understand, as we look closely at what Paul writes in these verses, that the Apostle Paul is not trying to put leaders in a position of being untouchable when they have done wrong. But at the same time, he is trying to protect God’s anointed leaders from being wrongly accused and the church leadership from being undermined.
Realizing that it is possible for a godly leader to fail, Paul writes, “Do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.” At the root of Paul’s prohibition here is a warning to the elders and to the whole church family: Beware of false accusations made against an elder. This warning is to acknowledge the reality that elders are often falsely accused. Hence, as Christians we are to beware. The obvious question that must be asked is, “Why would someone make a false accusation against an elder?” Typically, there are at least three motives behind someone’s falsely accusing a leader with the goal of undermining his leadership.
One can be that elders oftentimes, as part of their leadership responsibilities, are required to correct others in the church family. Holding others accountable is not easy. A leader’s manner of correction should be Biblically based, gracious, and humble. However, even when it is, sometimes there is no pleasant or easy way to tell some one the truth or to correct them. As a result of personal shame or the embarrassment of needing someone to correct them, sometimes people will strike back at an elder or try to get even with him, maybe even slandering him or starting rumors when the elder has had to speak to them the truth in love. In short, the previous correction of the accuser by an elder may lead the accuser to retaliate against the elder through a false accusation of wrong doing.
Another reason leaders are sometimes falsely accused is that others resent the fact that a person has been called to a position of the leadership that they wanted. So they reject an elder’s teaching, resist his biblical authority, or resent his virtue or simply that God is blessing his life. Hence, it is not uncommon to discover that at the root of an accusation against an elder is the jealousy of his accuser. Jealousy of leaders can stir up false accusations against them. The Bible is full of such cases of God’s chosen leaders suffering from attacks of jealous want-to-be leaders. Joseph, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, and Jesus all suffered from false accusations driven by jealousy.
A third cause of false accusations against elders comes as a result of personality clashes and differing leadership styles. Some people live and lead their lives in a highly self-disciplined, rigid, and strict manner. When they come up against other leaders who are more relaxed, flexible, and spontaneous, they simply can’t cope with it. They believe that there must be sin in their lives or a lack of commitment to what is really important. And rather than being loving and tolerant of differences, they falsely accuse them of wrong doing.
In giving us this warning concerning false accusations of elders, the Apostle Paul is reminding us that there are Christians who have their reasons for attacking godly men. Sadly, oftentimes leaders are wrongly accused or vilified.
That is why Paul instructs not just fellow elders but all of us not to receive an accusation against an elder without two or three eyewitnesses to the elder’s sin. Note the term “don’t receive.” It literally means, “Don’t even entertain the thought,” or “Don’t even consider in your mind” an accusation against an elder unless there are two or three witnesses. If you remember our study of Matthew 18:16 dealing with confronting a sinning brother or sister in Christ, Jesus instructed us that after you have privately confronted the one who has done wrong and they refuse to admit and turn away from their sin, then you are to take two or three eyewitnesses with you to confront the person of his or her wrong doing. If you don’t have two or three eyewitnesses, according to Jewish law, a single witness could go to the elders and ask them to investigate the matter.
But here the Apostle Paul goes a step further when it concerns the accusation against an elder. Unless there are two or three eyewitnesses to the wrong doing, then the rest of the elders are not permitted to investigate or even receive the accusation. John MacArthur explains further. He writes:
Among the Romans, a plebeian [common citizen] might be condemned on
the deposition of one credible witness; but it required two to convict a
senator [political leader]. The reason for this difference is evident: those
whose business it is to correct others will usually have many enemies; great
caution, therefore, should be used in admitting accusations against such
persons. To put it simply, one of the best ways you can protect your pastors
and elders is with a deaf ear to accusation. It's that simple. When a man is
placed into spiritual leadership, he has to anticipate that hateful, jealous,
sinful people will falsely accuse him to try to ruin his ministry. And people
can and often will say anything and everything. [Therefore, when a single
accuser makes an accusation against an elder] . . . just flatly reject it, don't
even investigate an unsubstantiated accusation made against a pastor/elder.
It ought to be ignored.
One does not have to be in leadership very long as an elder to experience such attacks. And when they come, they not only surprise you from whence they come, but they hurt deeply. I agree with John MacArthur in his response to having been unjustly attacked many times when he writes:
But in spite of false accusation I want you to know the ministry is a joy.
And being falsely accused puts you in good company because the Lord was
falsely accused also. And as Hebrews 12 says, if I can put it in the first
person, "I have not yet suffered unto blood" like He did. But in
protecting leadership in the church, the first line of protection is a deaf ear
to accusation. Don't even think about it.
But what are the elders (or you) supposed to do with a single accuser of an elder concerning a private sin? I suggest two steps that need to be considered with the single accuser. First, you the church family member or elder, whoever hears this accusation, should ask the accuser if he has followed the very first step that Jesus gave us in Matthew 18:15. Has he privately confronted the elder about his sin? If he has not, challenge him to do so. If he is afraid to go by himself, then, not as a “receiver” of the accusation but as one to emotionally support the accuser, do what is right. Offer to go with the accuser. As a bystander, you might be able to help the accuser understand whether or not he has a case.
If the accuser tells you that he has confronted the elder and the elder admitted he was wrong and repented of it, then in most cases it doesn’t need to go any further. I agree with the wisdom John Stott shares concerning this situation. He says, “It is a safe rule that private sins should be dealt with privately, and only public sins publicly. It is neither right nor necessary to make what is private public, until all other possibilities have been exhausted.” But if this private sin is something that the accuser feels is an endangerment to the rest of the church family, then take it to the elders and let them decide.
But what happens if the accused elder denies the truth of the accusation? Then the second step comes into play. If there are no other eye witnesses to this elder’s sin, instruct the accuser to drop the matter. God’s Word says that in such a case, neither the elders nor the church body is to receive such an accusation. Again, this is not to place elders beyond successful accusation but beyond illegitimate accusation. Assume that an elder is innocent until he is proven guilty. The church family, like your own home family, should be a safe place where reputations are considered sacred. The commandment, “You shall not bear false witness,” is to be rigorously applied.
It is very easy for people to make an accusation against an elder based on nothing more than their interpretation of the elder’s motive. Several years ago, I was invited into another church’s elder board meeting to help them work through some accusations being made against their pastor by another elder. It turned out that the accusations were based solely on one other elder’s ability to judge the pastor’s motives plus other circumstantial evidence. I had to step between them and point to these verses and what God had ordered concerning facts, not innuendos or circumstantial evidence. Biblically, this accusing elder had not followed Matthew 18, nor had the elder board any grounds to accept the elder’s accusation against the pastor. In the end, what was at the root of the problem was not the pastor’s sin, but a style of leadership one elder could not accept and an inability of that same elder to work with others when personalities clash.
Keep in mind that what we have in these verses is God’s manner of preventing the too often wrongful treatment of elders. This is not about making it possible for leadership to get away with anything. There is an old saying of which I have become painfully aware, that usually surfaces when people want to put down a godly leader. Every time I hear it, I confess, it makes me angry, because I have witnessed many a good leader’s reputation ruined and seen him forced out of ministry due to false accusations. The saying is, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire!” It is meant to communicate the idea that if you hear enough bad rumors about someone, then there must be some truth to it. Not always so! That may be a good slogan for a volunteer fire department, but it does not apply to local churches. As often as I have found that saying to be true, I have also found it not to be true. So much so, that I suggest that the slogan be more appropriately applied to the person with a slanderous tongue. As James put it in James 3:6, “And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell.”
Thankfully, how to deal with false accusations towards an elder is not something we at Crossroads have had a lot of experience with over the past more than twenty years. We know what to do when accusations against leaders are confirmed, but we haven’t had to deal with divisive people who refuse to follow the Scriptures when they think that a leader is in sin. As a result, the first time we had to deal with a surprise and unexpected attack against the elders by a divisive member of this congregation happened not long ago, and we as elders, to be quite honest with you, didn’t handle it very well.
Without evidence to support his claims and without his following Matthew 18, this person brought about a great deal of confusion and hurt to this church family; and as the leaders, we are partly to blame. There were some things we did right. We tried to “win our brother” and operate in grace toward him and not unnecessarily cause the person to lose face concerning his own sin in the matter. But we failed in that we allowed his ungrounded accusations to go public without publicly reprimanding him (because he had left the church), and we failed to inform those of you who heard some things what we as elders had concluded as a result of our investigation. Much would have been resolved if we had known what we know now. We should have publicly stated something like, “After thoughtful investigation and review, we as a Board of Elders do not agree with nor can we support this person’s accusations as being true. And furthermore, based on what the Word of God says in 1 Timothy 5:19, we tell you likewise to ignore such false accusations.” If we had done just that, said something to you, many would have not been hurt. But sometimes we learn best through our mistakes, including us, the elders.
But what if the accusations against an elder are true and can be confirmed by two or three eyewitnesses? God’s Word gives us at least three things to consider:
First, in Deuteronomy 19:16 we read, “If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing, then both the men who have the dispute shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who will be in office in those days.” The idea here is that when an accusation is made by a witness or several witnesses, both the accused and his accusers are to meet face to face with those in leadership. This way the accused is given a chance to defend himself in front of his accusers.
Second, as we pointed out from our study of Matthew 18, the whole motive behind the confrontation is the restoration, not the rejection of the person. The same is to be true with an elder who is in sin. We are to “win our brother.” It was never meant to be a way you could play one-upmanship, get rid of a pastor, or humiliate someone who is different than you by pointing out a wrong. In Galatians 6:1 the Apostle Paul writes, “Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted.” If you read further in Galatians, Paul goes on to say that you don’t restore someone with the attitude that you are in some way better or superior to the one who has failed. Restoration has always been the motive behind confrontation over someone’s sin.
As with the sin of any other member in the church family, so it is true of the elder who has sinned. Depending upon the circumstances, one may not need to go public when the sin of an elder is not observed by others. For instance, let’s say an elder for years has thought nothing about his driving habit of ignoring speed limits, stop signs, and seat belt laws. One day, in conversation with another elder, he admits to having received his second speeding ticket in a month. His fellow elder graciously asks him about his obvious ignoring of traffic laws and how that violates Romans 13 and God’s instructions to submit to the governing authorities in the land. Suddenly, the light goes on in the erring elder’s head. “This is not a good thing in my life. I agree with you. From now on, I am going to make a more conscious attempt to pay attention to traffic laws.” What that elder has done is repented. He has stopped driving like a rebel. But should he be dismissed from the board of elders because of his past driving record? Should his error be brought before the whole church? I don’t believe so, because the following verse 20 only applies to the unrepentant sinning elder, not the repentant one. There is no hard and fast rule given here as to when a repentant elder should be removed or brought before the rest of the church family.
There could be other circumstances going on in this example that I just gave you that might require his removal as an elder, but that decision would have to be left up to the discretion of the rest of the elders. Remember, discipline is always about restoration, not rejection. It is to encourage growth and health in the body.
But if the matter of sin by an elder has been confirmed by two or more eyewitnesses and the elder refuses to repent but continues in sin, verse 20 demands that he be rebuked. But note, will you, that the matter we are talking about concerns “sin” as clearly defined by Scripture, not someone’s preferences or personal convictions. Another pastor, Steve Cole writes:
I once was called in by another church to arbitrate a conflict where a deacon
had sent a letter to the entire congregation charging the pastor with not
feeding the flock and not visiting the members enough. The pastor hadn’t
sinned and the deacon hadn’t talked directly to the pastor about the
situation, so the deacon was in sin.
In another situation I know about, a deacon did a similar thing, accusing the pastor of teaching heresy or a non-traditional view of a passage of Scripture. The elders listened to the deacon, studied the passage in question themselves, and decided that the Pastor’s exposition of the passage not only had not violated their statement of faith, but had some merit, even though not all of them agreed. But for sure, there was no sin involved. The deacon was not satisfied with the board’s conclusion and wrote an open letter to the congregation denouncing the pastor and the elders. Ironically, the deacon was in sin and was publicly and rightfully rebuked by the elders.
Our text says that an elder who refuses to make any effort at stopping his sinful practice is to be rebuked. But how does that actually work out in real life? Our text specifies, “In the presence of all, so that the rest also will be fearful of sinning.” To whom does the “all” and the “rest” refer? I have found in a study of a host of New Testament scholars that they don’t all agree. Some, like John MacArthur, say that due to the fact that the context is speaking to elders dealing with elders, “the rest” refers to the rest of the elders. Hence, in the presence of the rest of the elders, bring the rebuke. That’s possible. S. Lewis Johnson, another highly regarded Greek scholar, says that more than likely “the all” and “the rest” refer to the congregation. His view is just as possible. However, both men eventually say that in practice, an elder who continues in sin should be both rebuked before the elders, rebuked publicly, and removed from leadership until he turns away from his sin. Based on our study of 1 Corinthians 5, removal from leadership would be the appropriate action.
Notice why this form of rebuke of an unrepentant elder is healthy for the church. First, if fellow elders realize that the others are going to hold them accountable to a godly life, they will not want to be rebuked by their peers and thus will live godly lives.
Secondly, when the rebuke of a leader is public, it affords the whole church family the opportunity to become involved in lovingly reaching out to the offender, to win their brother, so that he will wish to repent and “come home.”
Third, Steve Cole, the pastor I referred to a moment ago, also wrote:
Public rebuke clears the name of God and His church from association with
and toleration of evil. If a church leader (or the one who wrongfully accuses
the leader) sins and the matter is covered up, there are still going to be leaks.
When the leaks spread, people begin thinking that the church tolerates evil.
That erodes trust in the message we proclaim and in the holy God we serve.
Thus God’s method, even in the case of His choicest servants, is to uncover
the sin before everyone.
And Steve’s point is supported by verse 21, in which we are told not to show partiality to anyone when it comes to sin, including the elders. If we are going to show them grace, then we need to show the same grace to others in the congregation. If we are going to publicly rebuke them for unrepentant bad driving habits, then so we should with the rest.
But always keep in mind that the goal is not just removal from leadership, it is to bring about a correction and restoration of this leader’s life. Should he come around to realize his wrongdoing and repent from it, then, in time, after proving himself, this elder could be, not must be, but could be with the permission of the rest of the church family, asked to continue on in his role as a leader.
One last quick point is drawn from verse 22. Paul also urged Timothy to minimize the possibility of elder failure by being extremely careful about whom he appointed to be an elder in the first place. Laying on hands in this context probably refers to public ordination or the appointment of an elder (see 4:14 and 2 Timothy 1:6). A group of elders who knowingly appoint a deficient candidate to the office of elder, without having examined the candidate with due diligence, shares his guilt when his unacceptability surfaces. None can perfectly know the secret heart or life of any person, and mistakes can happen even after careful examination. But the fact that mistakes occur in ordaining certain people as elders should not deter us from diligently checking out elder candidates and doing our best to appoint available men to leadership, as they fit the qualifications for an elder as laid out in Scripture.
When you look back over this series on resolving conflicts caused by sin, what did you learn that you had never understood before? Has it made a difference in the way you listen to or help people in conflict?
Without naming names, can you share when a church you were a part of mishandled the discipline of a leader? What Biblical principle was violated?
Can you recall a time when a church you were a part of handled the discipline of a church leader in a Biblical manner? What was the end result?
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