Biblical Eldership Church Leadership

Paul’s Letters to the Churches

certainly used in the sense of a group of officials implies that the other was also.20

Finally, there is obvious similarity between the joint use of the words overseers and deacons in this passage and those found in 1 Timothy 3:1-l3. Both letters were written in the early to mid sixties (AD. 62 66). We know there were overseers and deacons at Ephesus during this time (1 Tim. 3:1-13), so it is likely that there were officially recognized overseers and deacons at Philippi as well. The interpretation, then, that assigns merely a functional sense to Paul’s usage of overseers and dea cons in this instance is confusing and nearly meaningless. It is also significant that only two separate groups of officeholders, “overseers and deacons,” appear in Paul’s salutation to the Philippi ans. Some fifty years after Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Polycarp wrote a letter to the church at Philippi in which he gave instructions concerning the leaders of the church. Polycarp, who was born around AD. 70 and died AD. 156, was the overseer of the church in Smyrna in Asia Minor. He was a disciple of John the apostle and a distinguished martyr for Christ. It is immensely relevant to us that in his letter to “the Church of God which sojoumeth at Philippi” (ca., AD. 115), Polycarp refers to only two groups of officials: elders and deacons. He comments considerably on elders, even mentioning one elder (Valens, who had fallen into sin because of greed) by name: Wherefore it is right to abstain from all these things, submitting yourselves to the presbyters [elders] and deacons as to God and Christ. . .. And the presbyters also must be compassionate, merciful towards all men, turning back the sheep that are gone astray, visiting all the infirm, not neglecting a widow or an orphan or a poor man: but providing always for that which is honorable in the sight ofGod and ofmen, abstaining from all anger, respect of persons, unrighteous judgment, being far from all love of money, not quick to believe anything against any man, not hasty in judgment, knowing that we are all debtors of sin.2| Polycarp makes no mention of a chief overseer (bishop) in his let ter, demonstrating that there was no such individual at Philippi. In fact, although Polycarp was called “the overseer of Smyrna” by his

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