Mark 3:31-35. Bonhoeffer refers to four creation mandates for all humanity: labour, marriage, government, and the Church as the community of believers.
- Pastoring men.
- Older men. The KJV has ‘elder’ but it is not referring to a man with the office of elder but an older man.
- Lev.19:32. Calvin comments that ‘very few people can bear to be rebuked’. Paul says to exhort him (NIV, NKJV) or ‘encourage him’ (ESV). Note Job 32:4-10.
- Calvin says to be ‘as mild and lenient as possible’, like a doctor who adds sugar or syrup to a draught of medicine. Chrysostom: ‘it is possible to reprove without offense, if one will only make a point of this: it requires great discretion, but it may be done.’ Bonhoeffer: ‘It is not only what is said that matters, but also the man who says it.’
- recall Luke 2:51.
- Younger men. For younger men, there is obviously more scope to be more assertive.
- Pastoring women.
- Older women. See Rom. 16:13; Prov.23:22; 1 Kings 2:19-20.
- Younger women. They are to be treated as sisters, literally ‘in all purity’. Patrick Fairbairn: ‘A most necessary caution for all times!’ Calvin says ‘he is not cautioning against immoral behaviour’, but ‘urges him to be prudent.’ That is naïve – the issue is surely both. Think of the fall of King David!
- Bonhoeffer: ‘The destruction of the sense of shame means the dissolution of all sexual and conjugal order, and indeed of all social order in the widest sense.’ Age & gender differences make a difference.