What Does Paul Mean by "Husband of one wife?"
- Does Paul mean an elder must be married to only one woman instead of two or three?
- Or does he mean that an elder must be married in order to be qualified to serve as an elder?
- Or perhaps this means that a man cannot serve as an elder if a divorce marks his past. What if his divorce occurred before he converted to Christ?
To interpret Paul’s words as referring to marital status poses many, many difficult questions. However, there is another camp that argues that Paul’s words have nothing to do with marital status. This camp contends that Paul is requiring an elder to be a “one-woman-man,” committed to one woman only in sexual purity, before he can ever consider church leadership. (Indeed, if Paul was referring to marital status his requirement would exclude single men from serving as elders and that poses a big problem since Paul himself was single!)
I pitch my tent in the second camp, and following are six reasons I believe Paul is talking about sexual purity:
1) A literal translation of the text is not “one wife husband” but “one woman man.”
It is true that the Greek words andre (man) and gune (woman) are used in passages to indicate a wife or a husband, but only when the context dictates this.
The root meaning of andros is not “husband” but “man” (the Greek word aner). Likewise, the root meaning of guniakos is not “wife” but “woman” (the Greek word gune).
The terms only mean “husband” or “wife” if used in an obvious context of marriage. This position is not only based on the use of the word in the Greek Bible, but is the corporate testimony of the Friberg Lexicon, Louw-Nida Lexicon, Liddell-Scott Lexicon, Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, and Arndt-Gingrich-Danker and Bauer’s A Greek-Enlish Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature and the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.1
2) “One” is emphatic.
Any word placed up front in a Greek sentence is the emphatic word. The emphasis of this phrase falls on this single word. The elder must be a one woman man. He must not be a “two” woman man or a “multiple” woman man.
What is a one woman man? Someone devoted to one woman. The emphasis here is not on his marital status, but his sexual purity. Paul never uses this phrase to refer to marital status—especially in his lengthy discussions on the topic of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. A one woman man is a man who does not indulge himself in immorality, pornography, or flirtatious behavior. He is committed to one woman. Now obviously this includes monogamy, for no man can be married to two women and still be a “one woman man.” Also, this clearly implies that he is not divorcing one woman so he can be with another. However, the text says nothing about divorce. If Paul wanted to discuss divorce it seems he would have said it straightforward just as he does in 1 Corinthians 7:11-12.
3) In this passage Paul nowhere else directly refers to sexual purity as a qualification for eldership.
This is a most obvious requirement for spiritual leadership. Although this argument is far from final, it weighs evidence in favor of the sexual purity view.
4) Paul says nothing about divorce and remarriage.
Paul does not say “He must never have been divorced.” He says nothing about the man’s past but only about his present state. If this passage means he can never have been divorced, then to be consistent you must also require every elder to never have loved money, lacked gentleness, been addicted to wine and all the other qualifications. Paul says, “An overseer, then, must be.” “Be” is a present tense being verb in the Greek—he must currently be a one-woman-man—this is not a commentary on his history.
Now I must admit that any man who has been divorced or committed infidelity should be examined very closely and have proven himself over a long period of time before ever being placed in a position of leadership. Ultimately, that decision is up to the discretion of the elders of each particular church. However, we should not make Paul say more than he says.
Against this view someone will ask, “If this passage does not require marriage, then why does Paul make being a good manager of one’s household a requirement in 3:4-5 which would obviously require marriage?”
We must remember that in Paul’s day almost all men were married. Singleness is much more common today than in Paul’s day. In fact, it was not considered unusual for a boy to be married at the age of 13 or 14. Thus, it was a natural understanding that almost all elders would be married, therefore, Paul adds that to be a qualified elder, he must be able to govern his family with excellence. But Paul is not making marriage a prerequisite for eldership.
5) Paul himself was single.
It is unlikely that Paul would make a requirement for elders he installed into service (Acts 14:23) which he did not live up to himself (1 Cor 7:7). And never does Scripture imply that singleness makes a man less fit for spiritual leadership. Paul himself confesses that singleness allows one to be more wholly devoted to God and undistracted with the duties of marriage (1 Cor 7:32-34).
6) Paul uses a parallel phrase elsewhere to point out sexual purity.
In 1 Timothy 5 he lists the qualifications for a widow receiving financial support from the church. In verse 9 he writes that she has to have been “the wife of one man,” or more literally, “a one-man-woman.” The Greek tense of “having been” (perfect active participle) means that she was a “one–man-woman” in the past and continues to be up to the present. If “one-man-woman” meant married, how could she still be married in the present? This simply does not work. However, if Paul is referring to devotion to one man, then it makes sense. Implication? The qualified widow is a widow who remained sexually pure not only during her marriage but up to the present day. Though her husband has deceased, she continues to be a one-man-woman by her purity.2
Additionally, if Paul is saying that the only widows worthy of support are those who have been married once—and did not remarry after the death of their first husband, then why does Paul command widows to get remarried in 1 Corinthians 7:9? Scripture never indicates that a woman whose husband died and gets remarried is somehow less honorable than one whose husband died and did not remarry. Paul once again refers to sexual fidelity, not marital status. If being remarried after the death of one’s spouse makes a widow somehow less qualified, then why did Paul not only allow widows to get remarried (Rom 7:1-3) but encourage it (1 Cor 7:39)?
Endnotes
1. Aner is used in the NT as follows: brethren (13), gentlemen(1), husband(39), husbands(13), man(71), man’s(2), men(70), virgin (1), and gune is used as follows: bride(1), wife(71), wife’s(1), wives(11), woman(96), woman’s(1), women(33), Robert L. Thomas, New American Standard Hebrew-Aramaic and Greek Dictionaries: Updated Edition, electronic ed. (Anaheim: Foundation Publications, Inc., 1998, c1981, c1998), G435.
2. The context of this passage indicates moral issues of integrity (piety, hope in God, prayers night and day, too old to work, vv 4-9), not marital status.