In this series I’ve argued one thesis. The Bible never authorizes paying a pastor, or anyone laboring inside a local church, a regular salary. One point needs to stand clearly in view, because it aids our comprehension of what the New Testament is communicating.
“Do not muzzle the ox.” “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” These phrases answer one question and one question only: does someone who labors in gospel work deserve support? Yes. Jesus says so. Paul says so. Nobody disputes this.
The real question
But that answer doesn’t touch a second question, and the second question is the one that actually matters here. How was that support given, and to whom? The right to be supported and the shape that support takes are two different things, and Scripture doesn’t collapse them into one.
The last article answered the question for traveling ministers. Their support came from hearers, from sending churches, or from their own two hands when neither was sufficient. Paul himself worked as a tentmaker when support wasn’t there.
This article asks the same question about a different man entirely: the resident pastor, the elder who lives among the congregation he shepherds. Scripture addresses him too. 1 Timothy 5:17–18 is the New Testament’s clearest and most direct discussion of how a non-itinerant minister was actually compensated. This passage, and arguably this passage alone, describes the man who stays.
“Elders who lead effectively are worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching. For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,” and, “The worker is worthy of his wages” (1 Tim. 5:17-18 BSB).
Most readers stop right there and conclude the case is closed. We need to ask the sharper question first, the one this whole article exists to answer. Does Paul authorize a fixed salary for resident pastors?
The word that connects two very different people
They key word Paul uses in this passage is honor. He opens with widows, “Honor the widows who are truly widows” (1 Tim 5:3). He closes with elders, “worthy of double honor” (1 Tim 5:17). Same word, same chapter, a few verses apart.
The widow context settles part of this immediately. Verse 16 makes it plain that they must “not allow the church to be burdened, so that it can help the widows who are truly in need.” The burden language indicates that honoring widows meant material support, not mere respect in words and attitude.
Regarding support for widows, it’s worth naming an assumption modern readers bring to this passage without realizing it. When we hear “the church should support widows,” we picture something like a government benefit check, a fixed amount, arriving on schedule every month, regardless of circumstances. First-century churches did not operate a modern social welfare system that guaranteed every qualifying widow a fixed monthly payment. Support meant food, given when needed. It meant money or goods changing hands person to person, in amounts that varied with the season and the need. Whatever “honor” meant for these widows, it wasn’t a welfare check. But recognizing that still leaves the real question untouched: what kind of support, and how much of it?
What the ancient evidence actually says
Scholars who study the New Testament rely on two main tools to pin down what a word like “honor” meant to the people who used it. The first is a lexicon, essentially a scholarly dictionary that catalogs how a word gets used across the full range of ancient Greek writing. The second is the papyri, thousands of everyday documents, letters, receipts, wills, business records, written on papyrus. The papyri matter because they show how ordinary people used a word in daily life, not just how it appears in polished literature.
Both tools help us here because 1 Timothy 5 uses honor twice. Verse 3 uses the Greek verb, timaō, “to honor.” Verse 17 uses the matching noun, timē, “honor.” Same word wearing two different grammatical hats. What the lexicons and the papyri say about that word applies to both verses equally.
Both point the same direction. BDAG, the standard Greek lexicon scholars use for the New Testament, lists several senses for timē, and places 1 Timothy 5:17 specifically under the sense it labels “honor conferred through compensation, honorarium, compensation.”1 Not a fixed price. Not bare respect with no material component. An honorarium.
What is an honorarium?
An honorarium is a payment given out of gratitude, not out of legal obligation. Nobody owes it as a matter of contract. It’s the kind of payment a church today gives a guest speaker, or a family gives a pastor who conducts a funeral, out of appreciation for a service that was never priced in advance. A salary is different by nature. It’s fixed, scheduled, and owed regardless of how the giver feels about the work. An honorarium is neither fixed nor owed. It’s a gift.
BDAG even points to an ancient example of exactly this kind of gift. A surviving will from a man named Lycon, dating to the third century BC, describes an honorarium left to his physician, a token of gratitude for years of care, not a fee charged for services rendered.2 That’s the picture Paul uses when he tells Timothy elders deserve “double honor.” Not a contract. A grateful gift, freely given.
“Honor” does not mean a salary
J. Andrew Kirk, writing in The Expository Times, studied this word across classical Greek and the papyri and reached a firm conclusion: “The word timē, neither in classical Greek nor in the papyri, ever means ‘regular salary.’ It means rather a due reward, recompense or honorarium for particular services rendered.”3 Read that again; don’t miss it. Kirk’s survey of the classical and documentary evidence found no example in which timē described a regular salary. It describes a reward given for particular service, honor with a gift attached to it.
James Moulton and George Milligan compiled a landmark study of the papyri that scholars still cite by their names, MM for short. Their own study of these documents backs up the lexicon’s findings independently. Their entry for timē documents two consistent uses across hundreds of ordinary business documents: honor shown to a person, and the market price of goods like oil, corn, or wine, sold by weight or measure.4 Not one example uses the word for a person’s wages.
Ordinary Greek speakers had other words for that. For example, one papyrus MM cites uses a related word, timēma, to record payment for hiring dancing girls: three measures of wheat handed over for services rendered.5 Paul had that vocabulary available to him, but he didn’t apply it to resident pastors. He used timē which carries the meaning of honorarium.
What made support necessary?
The widow context raises another question: what made material support necessary? Paul did not create a fixed arrangement for every widow. He considered her circumstances. Family members provided when they could. The church helped when no other support was forthcoming.
The same principle may explain elders who “work hard at preaching and teaching.” Periods of extensive ministerial labor consumes time that cannot be spent earning a living elsewhere. An elder may therefore need material assistance from time to time.
That does not make him an employee. A widow may receive ongoing support because her circumstances continue. No one would call that support a salary. The same principle can apply to a resident pastor.
Why the ox, not how
Notice something easy to miss in verse 18. “Do not muzzle an ox” answers a why question, not a how question. It explains why a laborer deserves to benefit from his own labor. It says nothing about frequency, amount, or mechanism. Paul cites it to establish a principle, then leaves its shape to the surrounding context, which here is honor assessed case by case, not wages fixed in advance.
What a major modern commentary concedes
William Mounce’s Word Biblical Commentary, a major mainstream reference, surveys the same question and reaches a telling conclusion. Mounce references Kirk noting he had offered four reasons for his conclusion: (1) the early church likely lacked the funds for a regular salary for resident pastors; (2) 1 Timothy 3:7 suggests elders kept their secular jobs; (3) timē never means a regular salary; and (4) Paul would hardly tie compensation to an efficiency test that rewarded some elders over others. Weighing those four against a different scholar who argued in favor of salaried clergy, Mounce singles out two as the strongest: the limited church funds, and the point that timē never means a regular salary.6
That matters more than it might seem. Mounce isn’t necessarily defending Kirk’s conclusion. He leans toward calling elder support a “stipend,” which is softer language than Kirk would choose. But notice what Mounce has already conceded before he calls it a stipend: the church likely couldn’t have afforded a regular salary, and the word Paul used never meant one anyway. A mainstream commentator granted both of Kirk’s strongest points, then still chose a gentler word to describe the result. That word choice doesn’t undo what he already conceded. An honorarium can look like a stipend from a distance, especially when it’s given regularly to a man in ongoing need. But looking similar isn’t the same as being the same. One is a gift the church chooses to give. The other is a wage the church is obligated to pay.
What double honor actually means
“Double honor” doesn’t mean twice the salary of someone else. What it does mean is that all elders deserve respect. Those who labor hardest deserve more generous, tangible recognition, adjusted to circumstance rather than fixed by formula.
What Paul told the elders himself
Everything above is brought into focus when we observe what Paul says to elders directly, as he gives them his parting words. Acts 20 puts him on a beach near Miletus, addressing the elders of the church at Ephesus, the very city 1 Timothy addresses. He doesn’t expect to see these men again.
“I have not coveted anyone’s silver or gold or clothing. You yourselves know that these hands of mine have ministered to my own needs and those of my companions. In everything, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus Himself: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” (Acts 20:33-35 BSB)
Don’t gloss over Paul’s instructions to the Ephesian elders! Paul doesn’t tell these elders the church owes them a living. He doesn’t tell them they should expect to be salaried clergy. Just the opposite! He tells them to work with their hands, so they’d have something to give away! He gives them his own example as their pattern, not a payroll he expects the church to establish. Instead of expecting a regular salary from the church, Paul tells them to work so they can help those in need. That’s quite the reversal from today’s typical church practice.
What this passage actually authorizes
1 Timothy 5 authorizes honor. It authorizes material support, generous and real, for resident pastors who labor hard. It never authorizes a fixed, regular salary owed as a matter of contract. The Bible commands churches to honor their elders. It never commands a paycheck.
At this point the reader no doubt has both questions and objections. In the next article I’ll address them.
References
- Walter Bauer, Frederick William Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “τιμή,” 1005.
- BDAG, s.v. “τιμή,” 1005.
- Kirk, J. Andrew. “Did ‘Officials’ in the New Testament Church Receive a Salary?” The Expository Times 84, no. 4 (January 1973): 107.
- James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914–1929), s.v. “τιμή.” 634-635.
- James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament: Illustrated from the Papyri and Other Non-Literary Sources (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914–1929), s.v. “τιμή.” 634-635.
- William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, vol. 46 of Word Biblical Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 309.