Old sins. What a weird term. If you knew a man who raped women in the past, but said that was a decade ago, would you let him date your daughter because his sins were old? If someone used to murder people but hasn't since he's been kept from people by going to jail, and now seems like a great guy, should you let him out of jail because those murders were old sins?
What if while someone is a pastor, he not only has sons that are involved in sexual immorality but he participates in those sins by both encouraging and failing to discourage them from those sins, not separating from them but instead letting them remain as a part of his house, but now that his kids are out of the house and the situations have changed and maybe his sons are no longer in these sins for a while, being now grown up, has concluded that he's good now?
Let me ask a different question: "What if a woman who engages in an adulterous affair and abandons her family to go off and marry her affair partner experiences the death of her former husband? Is she no longer an adulterous because her former husband suddenly has died or is she still an adulterous and you just can't see it now. From now on, everyone who meets her will know nothing about her adultery. Her former husband will only be known as having died and she married a new one. Her adultery is now invisible but it has not truly disappeared. Instead, she is still an adulterous, but you just can't see it now. If you were to try and see whether she is an adulterous, you have to look at the time when her husband was alive and what she did during that time. That's the only way to see it.
Likewise, when it comes to whether a pastor is qualified with the qualification of being a good father who rules his household well, and by that the Scripture means, none of his children can be rightly accused as committing an egregious sin while in a good standing relationship with their father who should discipline and cut them off from his household while they are in that sin, one can only see whether someone does not rule his household well by looking back at the time he ruled his household. Once his sons are grown, and maybe even in different life circumstances so that they are no longer visibly doing those sins, whether he is a good ruler of his household cannot be seen anymore. Like the adulterous who's husband dies, it is impossible to measure this qualification unless one looks back at the time he was a father who had a relational authority over his children. It is not whether he is still doing being a poor ruler of his household now that his children are gone or different. It is how he ruled his household at the time he actually ruled over the household. (The household is extended as long as one has a good-standing relationship with his children even if he has allowed them to move out.)
In this regard, the old sins are the new sins in the sense that the old sins committed that would disqualify a pastor back then when his sons were in sexual immorality disqualify him now because they are the current metric that are to be used as to whether a man is qualified in this area. As Paul argues, a man who is disqualified in this area should not rule the household of God.
1. The sins of his family are his sins unless he breaks from his children (or wife), as Eli's sons' sins cause God to give the death penalty, not only to his sons, but to Eli because he does not cut them off.
2. He will rule the church the same way by fudging on sin and not removing evil people from among the church, thus corrupting the church in a manner that Achan corrupted Israel.
3. A man who disregards God in order to retain a relationship with his children has no business leading people to follow God above all else.
Old sins? No, there are just qualifications to use as a measuring stick to see if God has prepared a man in his life for ministry or whether a man who is disqualified is wrongfully in ministry.
If someone shows themselves to be disqualified in these things while doing ministry, he is disqualified, the Spirit is not with him, and his ministry will belong to the devil, along with all of those who are a part of that ministry. The only thing that would save a church would be if people placed themselves under the ministry of other elders who are qualified. Like children under an unbelieving father but a believing wife, the believing wife makes the children holy. But if such qualified elders should be removed, and the entire ministry of the church becomes his ministry, then the entire church will become the possession of the devil.
Old sins? Old sins are simply the report of sins that were once in the present. The sins in the present will one day be revealed and they will be called old sins; but they're really all sins that God demands we use as a measuring stick as to whether one is qualified for ministry, and this is true whether they are repented of or not.
The murderer repents but he's still not qualified to walk free among us. The rapist repents but he's still not qualified to marry my daughter. Forgiven? If truly repentant. Qualified? Absolutely not!
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