1 Timothy 3:1

2. In officiary, 1 Timothy 3:1-13.

a. Of presbyter-bishops, 1 Timothy 3:1-7 .

1. A true saying Literally, faithful is the saying. Worthy of reliance is the maxim.

Desire Reach-after, as with the hand. Paul seems unconscious that we may construe that desire into an unholy ambition. Evil is in him that evil thinks. The apostle’s pure mind is thinking only of those who earnestly desire to achieve a good work, in discharging the office.

Bishop The word is the Greek term episkopos, with both ends clipped, the initial p softened, and the central k turned into an aspirate. It is compounded of epi, over, and skopeo, to inspect; and is exactly synonymous with the Saxon overseer or the Latin superintendent. Wesley, in ordaining Coke as bishop, or first of three ordained ministerial grades, preferred the term superintendent to bishop.

The Greek word episkopos was a political term, used by the Athenians to designate those whom they appointed to superintend their foreign dependencies. As the word is used of a Church officer in the Greek Testament only by Paul and his disciple Luke, (Acts 20:28; Philippians 1:1; Titus 1:7,) it is possible that such application originated with Paul. It is now agreed, we believe, generally, by Episcopalian scholars as well as others, that in the New Testament the term is always synonymous with elder. In the present chapter no order is recognised between the bishop and deacon. It is in Timothy himself, the delegate of the apostle, that Episcopalian scholars find the bishop. They thus maintain that while the word bishop, once given to the elder, was afterwards transferred to the first order, yet the order itself is the continuation of the apostolate, divested of its miraculous powers. Others maintain that while elder and bishop were originally one order, the apostles raised certain elders to a higher ordained grade, to whom the term bishop was excusively applied. The Presbyterian scholars, on the other hand, maintain that the apostolic office wholly ceased, and that the only scriptural Church officers are presbyters, or elders, and deacons.

Dr. Adam Clarke’s exposition of this paragraph is hardly less than a curiosity. He seems to suppose it a thing undoubted that episkopos here means diocesan bishop, and brings out very Episcopal conclusions: “Episcopacy in the Church of God is of divine appointment, and should be maintained and respected.… The State has its monarch, the Church has its bishops; one should govern according to the laws of the land, the other according to the word of God.” But writers like Bloomfield, Wordsworth, Ellicott, and Bishop Onderdonk, (in his Episcopacy Tested by Scripture,) find no bishop in the Scripture episkopos.