Who do you imagine to be the most ideal Christian leader? Is there such a thing as an ideal leader in the church? Yes. It is Jesus Christ. Discover your own view of a leader through today’s passage and see if it is in light of Jesus’ noble task done for us.

¹ Here is a trustworthy saying: whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. 

We are still on the subject of believers’ prayerful lifestyle, which reflects God’s desire to save all people, as fighting strategy number one against the false teaching.

In the introduction, up against the prevalent false doctrines, Paul reaffirmed the first ‘trustworthy saying’ that Christ Jesus’ mission in coming into the world was to save sinners (1:15). Without this central purpose, all end up being ‘myths and meaningless genealogies’ (1:3, 4).

This is the second trustworthy saying that follows. Therefore, we can assume that, as with the first trustworthy saying, there were speculations surrounding the quality or qualification of an overseer, contrary to what Paul is illustrating here. Coming right after the urge and correction concerning the Ephesian women’s false role model, the Artemis prophetess, it might be that even the church expected a similar kind of leadership. But the focus here is that an overseer has to desire ‘a noble task’, a good deed.

Anyone who has read Revelation with me and still has it impressed in their mind will immediately know what a believer’s good deed equals. It is ‘washing their garments in the blood of Jesus’ (Rev 7:14). If that expression was fascinating yet slightly vague, here is a more solid illustration for it.

^2-7 Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 

not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 

He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. 

(If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?) 

He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. 

He must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap.

Compared to the spectacular and charismatic leadership in the Artemis temple, it is normal, meek, and almost too standard. Someone who is faithful to their family; someone who is patient; someone who prays with their hands; someone who quietens their lifestyle in full submission to God’s desire to show Himself through believers.

It does not mean that if they do not satisfy any one point on this list, they fail to be leaders, which regrettably is how some churches use this list. Nevertheless, a leader cannot be an exception to leading a believer’s life that is good and pleasing to God’s eyes (2:3), displaying Christ’s noble task of saving sinners through their prayerful, quiet, ordinary lives (2:2) so that people might come to a knowledge of the truth (2:4) through them in a world flooding with falsehood.

Dear Lord, my heart is exposed before you yet again. You reveal the condition of my heart so vividly and accurately that when I read and re-read a passage, how I would have interpreted it otherwise makes me ashamed in secret. But before you, nothing is secret. You have known me since even before I was formed. You have known that every inclination in me is evil. Knowing all that, you still saved me through Christ Jesus, my perfect leader. Because of His submitting qualities and because you desire all to be saved. Save them, Lord! Save them through me! Use me and send me; you will do it if you have done it with me! Praise be to our God the Savour, our Almighty Father.

Image: Joshua Stops the Race of the Sun, Carlo Maratta (1625–1713), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons