Biblical Eldership Church Leadership

Paul ’s Letters to the Churches

subjects, “overseer” must be another term for elder.

0 1 Peter 521,2. Peter exhorts elders to oversee the church. Since elders oversee the local church, they are also overseers.

0 1 Timothy 3:1-13; 5:17-25. In 1 Timothy 5217, Paul speaks of the leading role and great value of “elders who rule well. . .especially those who work hard at preaching and teach ing.” But in 1 Timothy 3:1-13, he lists the qualifications of over seers and deacons, making no mention of elders. All the ques tions are resolved when we understand that the word “overseer” in 3:1 is a generic, singular form for overseers, and that “over seers” is used interchangeably for elders. Thus, 1 Timothy 3 and 5 refer to only two groups of men—elders and deacons. Unfortunately, the terms elders and overseers, which occur inter changeably in the New Testament, later came to refer to two com pletely separate officials: the overseer and the council of elders.26 Jerome, one of the greatest students of the original biblical languages (Greek and Hebrew) in the early centuries of Christianity, boldly as serted against all the traditions of his day that bishops and elders origi nally were the same: A presbyter and a bishop are the same...the churches were governed by a joint council of the presbyters. . .. If it be supposed that it is merely our opinion and without scriptural support that bishop and presbyter are one...examine again the words the apostles addressed to the Philippians. . .. Now Philippi is but one city in Macedonia, and certainly in one city there could not have been numerous bishops. It is simply that at that time the same persons were called either bishops or presbyters.27

Jerome was not the only early biblical commentator to affirm that elders and bishops were originally the same. J.B. Lightfoot writes:

But, though more full than other writers, [Jerome] is hardly more explicit. Of his predecessors the Ambrosian Hilary had discerned the same truth. Of his contemporaries and successors, Chrysostom, Pelagius, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, all

179