As a child, did you ever endure the panic of losing your mom in a crowded grocery store? Frightening stuff! You ran across the front of the store, pausing only long enough to look down each aisle intently for your missing mother.
Finally, somewhere between the dairy department and the canned soups, you could see her at the far end of a crowded aisle. You ran down the isle! You threw your arms around your mom in relief! You looked up. It wasn’t your mom! As a child, did you ever endure the embarrassment of embracing a total stranger in a crowded grocery store?
Do you think that we should treat everyone the same? I’m not asking about fairness; I’m asking, for instance, if you should treat everyone as you treat your own mother. Do you realize just how much we are informed about our interactions at church, school, and the world by what we learn at home?
No college course, no seminar on “interpersonal relationships”, and no mentor can fully take the place of your own home! For instance, if a young man takes the pastorate of a church made up of elderly men, young men, widows and eligible women, he is required to have some social skills that many others have paid thousands of dollars to get. But God’s instruction to such a man appeals to his experience growing up in the home.
I Timothy 5:1-2 says, “Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father; and the younger men as brethren; The elder women as mothers; the younger as sisters, with all purity.”
The Lord is putting an enormous amount of weight on that little word “as”. How should a young pastor treat a silver-haired trouble-maker? How should he treat a widow in his congregation? How is he to treat young ladies in the church? How is a church to care for their pastor?
Instead of giving a paragraph or a semester, God gives a word: “AS”! The Lord is assuming that “as“ a father, mother, brother, or sister means something. Indeed, it does!
• Treating an older man “as a father” means treating him with the respect with which you would treat your own father.
• Treating a man “as a brother” would certainly mean showing him “brotherly love” even at times when he may irritate you.
• Treating an elderly lady “as a mother” means owning the responsibility to watch out for her welfare. (I Timothy 5:3-8)
• Treating a younger lady “as a sister” has an obvious meaning, for the Bible adds the words, “with all purity.”
The upshot of all this is that if you don’t learn how to treat people at home, you won’t know how to treat them at church! Could your church run the same way that you run your home? The truth is that in some measure, it already does! Your church is the sum total of the people in it, and your home is the sum total of the lessons you teach your children each day.