A bishop must be blameless in other categories of matters also. He must be blameless as the steward of God, the dispenser, the distributor. In the large households and the big estates of those days there would be a manager. He would both pay the staff and regulate the timetable of the whole place, and he would do also give alms, benevolent gifts, to the poor, who came through that territory. So he has to be reliable. He holds the purse. He deals with money, and he had to be reliable in that office. If the elder is to be a minister, then it will be better if the church has a treasurer, so that the ministers themselves will not touch the money: that is the ideal. However, the minister must be reliable with God's things and with the truth. A bishop must be one who cannot be accused.
‘Not selfwilled’, but ready to listen, ready to consider. Self-willed! You know the kind of person: the first idea comes into his head is to be regarded as right and true, because it's from his head, and so that is what is going to be carried out.
‘Not soon angry’ – a patient person. Now when you read these verses 6, 7, and 8, they could all apply to all of us. They must apply to elders, but they are the standard for us all. An elder who is going to be an example must be blameless with regard to them. So we are all under these verses.
‘Not given to wine.’ Should Christians drink? I do urge you to consider these things and look through this. The wine of New Testament times was very, very weak. You couldn't do more than 4% alcohol in wine of those days. They didn't have the technology to make it any stronger, to keep out the unwanted bacteria that would ruin it. That was as far as it could go. So you had to drink a lot of it, like a weak beer, to get drunk. People did, but the ordinary wine was weak, and many think that, even then, for general social use it was diluted. It is certainly diluted in the ancient Jewish literature about the cup that you serve. One part wine, to ten parts water. So they believed it to be a sanitary drink, and for pleasure. But it was drunk more like a cordial than a wine. It was years later that there came along chaptalization and distillation, and stronger drinks and spirits. There was none of that in New Testament times. Yes, there was drunkenness, but it took a fair amount of drinking. So is wine forbidden for the Christian today? I believe it is, because if you read the New Testament Scriptures, you have got so many texts telling you to avoid like the plague things that are dangerous and harmful, as well as highly expensive and luxurious, and the drink industry nowadays is all of those things. So it has moved into a different category under the rules of Scripture. It has moved into the category of that which is undesirable for Christians. How interesting it is that the way was already set because even in the Old Testament, the priests on duty were not to touch wine. And not only the priests on duty, but kings were not supposed to touch wine. How interesting! What are we? A kingdom of priests. We are kings and we are priests. Here we have ‘not given to wine’.
‘No striker’, either physically or verbally. No hitting out to hurt with words or blows.
‘Not given to filthy lucre.’ If that is to be taken literally, it means not a person who can be bought. If it is intended figuratively also, it means a person who lives a life of moderation, and isn't covetous and doesn't seek for riches. I believe it is intended both ways.