Coming Up For Air

But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. 1 Timothy 6:11, New King James Version My wife and I got to attend a wedding over the weekend. To no one's surprise, 1 Corinthians 13 was also in attendance. This chapter of Paul's letter to the train-wrecked church at Corinth in the Bible is trotted out as a description of what love looks like at its freshest and most ready to inspire both optimism and disillusionment. Interesting, then, that Paul's first descriptor of love, or charity in the King James Version , is that it is patient. Interesting that this descriptor also comes up prominently in the home version of the ministry game which Paul modestly mails to Timothy as he equips his young disciple with closing words to battle for the church at Ephesus. If love is the ideal, the lofty, the Other Than The World, why might we need patience so quickly on its heels, which is where it follows in 1 Timothy 6:11? W...

11 But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love… 1 Timothy 6:11, New King James Version I enjoyed James Clavell's novel Shogun , but it's not where I expect to find a theology of progressive sanctification. Nevertheless, as its protagonist reflects on being a Westerner who has been rescued and incorporated into Japanese society, he extols with biblical cadence and a beautifully unpretentious landing, "The Lord God hath placed my feet onto the path, and rendered me a little useful." I think Paul foresees this for Pastor Timothy, and for us as he continues to spool out what comes down to us as 1 Timothy 6:11. If I'm right that the Holy Spirit enunciates this list with care rather than caprice, and I don't see anything controversial in the possibility, there is narrative as well as an enumeration of checkpoints available to the disciple. Paul, as we have been seeing, soberly warns Timothy away from the twin hazards of ...

But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith… One Timothy 6:11, New King James Version In his sermon, "Faith," Charles Spurgeon calls his title subject, "the stooping grace." Blessed be that aspect, then, of Christ's benevolence toward His own as we consider the checks and balances within spiritual maturity offered by Paul in 1 Timothy 6:11. That Timothy would not be overcome by the twin traps of spiritual pride or materialism, Paul entices him to run TOWARD the fullness of Christ, and then begins to stud the young pastor's alternative path with aspects of the Master's glory which, by grace, can be apprehended by His servants. Even here, there is a symmetry. Paul calls Timothy to run toward Christ's righteousness. Knowing, perhaps, this holistic descriptor of virtues can be attractive to the world for the world's ends, Paul next strings out godliness. Perhaps he reasons that by juxtaposing the two, we ...

But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness… 1 Timothy 6:11, New King James Version This morning in his Morning and Evening devotional which is nearly ubiquitous in mine, Charles Spurgeon takes off on Exodus 8:28, on Pharaoh's caution to the Hebrew slaves to go and serve God, but not to go too far. I think this exhortation of controllable degree is applicable to Paul's next commendation to Timothy on what to flee toward that the young minister would not be controlled by money or spiritual pride. For, as we begin to sense God's work in us in outwardly visible ways, that work of righteousness, pride beckons, and in this a sense of common purposes with the world. The world would, in fact, enlist us at this point, did we not, by grace, look up and perceive that godliness is our real standard. Our righteousness as God works it is but a drop in the ocean of the vastness and wonder of His character. It is a drop for which we are grateful, as we...

But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness… 1 Timothy 6:11, New King James Version “Our consiousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us anymore than without us," reflects George Elliott in Silas Marner . She admits, "There have been many circulations of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.” So it is that we find it difficult to envision different selves than the one currently distracted by or drowning in temptation. The sap of God's grace is circulating. We are as surely as Timothy is in the beginning of 1 Timothy 6:11, men and women of God. Even when that first bite has not blossomed yet, the Holy Spirit exhorts through Paul and through like-minded mentors in our lives to pursue the righteousness which is not yet manifest. This runs counter to the introverted hemming and hauling in which the enemy of our souls would have us waste our energies and this blood-bought day. He would have us focus on grim self-de...

But you, O man of God, flee these things… 1 Timothy 6:11, New King James Version Pastor Matthew Sink was examining Jonah's repentant prayer in the second chapter of the prophet's book. He observes that we don't like to call sin what it is because we cling to it as part of our identity. It isn't, on a deeper examination, a behavior problem. Recalcitrance toward repentance is a vision problem. We cannot see ourselves on the other side of a sin which has begun to be one of our distinctives. Thus, in the middle of sober parting exhortations, Paul refers to Timothy in the beginning of 1 Timothy 6:11 as man of God. He knows that Timothy is surrounded by materialism and its fruits. It readily sticks to him like summer humidity in the southern United States. If he is to see to the other side of it, this culturally besetting sin, he needs to constantly retreat to whom he is in Christ, before during and after the battle. A mentor memorably put it this way to David Wilkerson...

"Oh man of God…" 1 Timothy 6:11 A close friend of mine got started in his teens in the restaurant business. He showed some aptitude, but he was frustrated in his attempts at promotion with a particular chain with which he began. I think, he told me, they always saw the kid I was when I started. That sort of phenomenon of over-familiarity is why the four words which to us commence 1 Timothy 6:11 have such resonance. Paul considers Timothy his son in the faith, and this concern is commendable. He spends much of the letter we know as 1 Timothy pouring instruction into his disciple of the father would. His tone of warning is particularly fatherly as 1 Timothy closes and the old apostle cautions the younger disciple away from particular dangers. We already saw that inspired Paul is wise enough in the ways of the changing human heart to vary his tone. Between warning Timothy away from the dangers of spiritual pride and the dangers of chasing after material accumulation...

From 1 Timothy 6 – 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. New King James Version In Henry IV, part two , Hotspur renders the lingering verdict on an associate, "He could be contented: why is he not then?" Hotspur concludes, "In the respect of the love he bears our house: he shows in this, he loves his own barn better than he loves our house." At the close of 1 Timothy 6:10, Paul senses the same division of deepest affection among those who have rested in Christ's house, indeed have ministered in His Name, but love their own barns more. Whereas in Hotspur or other jilted providers we could account for a significant swelling of bitterness in their own souls, Paul's affections are...

10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness… 1 Timothy 6:10, New King James Version In the confession, "Forgive Me," Tenth Anenue North sounds the alarm both to the Lord and to themselves. "I have let intruders into the garden of my soul." I find here an alerting, nine-word klaxon in treading carefully through 1 Timothy 6:10. Both are willing to assign responsibility for what is worse than depravity's original ignorance. As the band and Scripture both portray, God has lovingly constructed the garden of our souls. He has protected it for ourselves and Him. He has pruned lovingly, that He might be further glorified by fruit. We, have let intruders in. We, as Paul phrases in serious warning to his young protégé, have strayed from the faith. Paul is in writing to the wandering outliers to lure them to the goodness of God. There is beauty in this, for instance, as Jonathan's audacious fai...

From 1 Timothy 6 – 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, It doesn't take much to turn GK Chesterton's thoughts to the solid enjoyment of sensory comforts, and he writes in Heretics , "Science can analyze a pork chop and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein. But science cannot analyze any man's wish for pork chop and say how much of it is hunger, and how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful." Chesterton's capacity for giving life's desires a second and third look, even if in his case largely for gratitude's sake, is useful as we consider Paul's turn in 1 Timothy 6:10. He has skillfully traced the potentially lethal impact of over-desiring material goods, from their capacity to captivate our thoughts, to their capac...

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. 1 Timothy 6:9, New King James Version "Our stuff is going to end up in a junkyard," confronts Pastor Matthew Sink. He connects this to identity with the realization, " You and I are just middlemen," and then brings the point home with a disconcerting side with the equation, "junk = treasure + time." All of this is true. All of this is unsettling to our system of assigning value. 1 Timothy 6:9 points to an even more frightening reality, that many men, many souls, could end up in Sink's junkyard. The apostle Paul has patiently traced this digression for his young charge, warning Timothy away from materialism and its entrancing power on the thoughts, then in its capacity to prepare us for traps, then in its tendency to fix in us habits of building and rebuilding what will be destroyed. There is hope an...

 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction… 1 Timothy 6:9 T.S. Eliot resigns in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock , “For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” At the other end of life, the poet's narrator has bowed before the reality to which the apostle Paul is pointing young Timothy, that the incremental material pursuits to which we give ourselves, even those as simple as a cup of coffee, these become by degrees the purpose of our lives. Annie Dillard put it more directly when she insisted, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives." Blessed, then, is the wide-angle correcting perspective of the Word of God. Blessed, then, are loving, intrusive people like Paul in our lives who will give us the benefit of their experience, of shipwrecked lives th...

9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts… 1 Timothy 6:9, New King James Version As a twentysomething destined for martyrdom on the mission field and Glory thereafter, a young Jim Elliott as he writes and thinks has almost too much prescience for me to keep admiring him at twice his age and some smaller fraction of his virtue. Almost. In his journals, Elliott is reflecting on the possibility of marrying with considerable cool sobriety. He knows as a husband he will be responsible as provider and that this, Scripturally, will divide his attention and energy. He knows with no pejorative intention toward his beloved Betty that each legitimate need met creates additional responsibilities and wants. He knows already that keeping up with the material status quo can prove tyrannical. So does Paul, as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Before Pastor Timothy, Paul's young protégé, takes too many steps in that direction, Paul is...

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare… 1 Timothy 6:9, New King James Version Screwtape is not prone to optimism. The fictional elder demon in CS Lewis's correspondence is actually prone to whine that demonic forces are unfairly overmatched by the goodness of God, but there is at least one spot in his narration that excites him. He clucks, to his nephew of the new Christian they are targeting, "Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing." Lewis may well have had texts like 1 Timothy 6:9 in mind. There, Paul, the veteran, cagey apostle is coaching Timothy on what to avoid as this first letter closes out. Inspired, Paul has steered Timothy away from the spiritual pride that comes from engaging in endless, useless arguments. Now Paul is equally serious that Timothy avoid the lure of chasing after riches. As we have seen with the...

From John 19 –10 Then Pilate said to Him, “Are You not speaking to me? Do You not know that I have power to crucify You, and power to release You?” 11 Jesus answered, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. I'm reading David Halberstam's The Children in which college students not so different from those am privileged to work with change the country by challenging its assumptions about their color. Standing up to social pressure to conform to an unjust system, I'm finding, required a certainty about one's own identity and value. For most of the young participants in the early stages of the Civil Rights movement, this value when identity took time to discover. This realization was also the steady work of mentors like Jim Lawson and Jim Bevil. Digging deeper, as Halberstam does, we find roots go beyond the intense, media-worthy crisis of legal confrontation which is the book's main subject.  Halberstam delves into the sense ...

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation… 1 Timothy 6:9a, New King James Version Greg Carlson reads the signs of the times in Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says about You when he offers, “Robbed of a rapt audience, advertisers know that influencing how you spend what to do  depends on having some control over how you spend the resources in your head.” Of course, in that sense, the times of which we speak may be older than digital media or television advertising. Spurgeon uses 19th-century language to be sure, but he addresses the same predicament when he sternly admonishes in Morning and Evening , "If you suffer any want it is your own fault; if you are straitened you are not straitened in Him, but in your own bowels. " The danger, of course, is older than either writer. The Holy Spirit through Paul points to the same issue in the opening of 1 Timothy 6:9. What we think about and dwell on, whether the metaphorical anatomist places s...

From 1 Timothy 6 – 6 Now godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into this world, [d]and it is certain we can carry nothing out. 8 And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. "Grace, only grace," repeats Tenth Avenue North in the song by that name, "can move us to a rhythm that can change our ways." Switching seamlessly to the discerning defensive within the same lyric, they proclaim, "Joy is the armor that can't be broken down." Through the Holy Spirit, Paul allows us a moment's wary rest like this in 1 Timothy 6:6-8. They are between two ominous, eyeball-to-eyeball warnings. Timothy, and we after him, surely need every component of armor against the tendency to stray from the day's work into prideful, entangling arguments. We, then, certainly need every weapon from God's armory against the dangers Paul will detail shortly of being caught up in chasing riches. Between, though, we breathe in....

From 1 Timothy 6 – 3 If anyone teaches otherwise and does not consent to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the doctrine which accords with godliness, 4 he is proud, knowing nothing, but is obsessed with disputes and arguments over words, from which come envy, strife, reviling, evil suspicions, 5 useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself. Tim Keller cautions in God's Wisdom for Navigating Life , "If you’re not doing work, and work in which you can take pride, you’re being cut off from part of your humanity." He predicts graphically, "There will be an atrophy of your soul." With similarly discerning x-ray technology, the inspired apostle Paul must have seen the same thing in 1 Timothy 6:3-4. Those whose teachings distract from the value of honest, submitted work before a watching world, Paul knows, are doing both their witness ...

And those who have believing masters, let them not despise them because they are brethren, but rather serve them because those who are benefited are believers and beloved. Teach and exhort these things. 1 Timothy 6:2, New King James Version The Saturday Evening Post observes around the turn to the 20th century in the Ken Burns Baseball documentary, "While baseball has magnates, they go unhung with our approval." Having urged submission of believing workers, literally slaves, in the opening of 1 Timothy 6, Paul channels urgency through Timothy that believers in life's lower stations go beyond the Saturday Evening Post' s benign neglect in their attitude toward their superiors who are also believers in Christ. Not only must the believer discipline resentment toward those more blessed with goods and influence so that they go un-hung, believing workers must see the entire relationship as something beyond a comparison. Here, Paul says, is a dynamic which transcends ...

Let as many bondservants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and His doctrine may not be blasphemed. 1 Timothy 6:1, New King James Version Elton Trueblood finds Abraham Lincoln's spiritual health in his perplexity. In Abraham Lincoln: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership , Trueblood distinguishes Lincoln from the fanatical moralists in that, "No sooner did he believe he was doing God's work that he began to admit that God's purposes might be different from his own. He never forgot," distinguishes Trueblood, "the contrast between the absolute goodness of God and the faltering goodness of all who are in the finite predicament." I find the same strands of continuity connecting the end of 1 Timothy 5 and the opening of 1 Timothy 6, the internal preparation Paul guides Timothy to undergo for confrontation and the external dynamics the older saint encourages Timothy to set the tone for in his ministry. We m...

From I Timothy 5 – 24 Some men’s sins are clearly evident, preceding them to judgment, but those of some men follow later. 25 Likewise, the good works of some are clearly evident, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden. One of my recent conquests has been Walter Lippmann's seminal Public Opinion on the interplay between media and individual judgment. As we learn to be justifiably suspicious of our impulses, Lippmann finds a small victory in that, "There is a noble counterfeit in that charity which comes from self-knowledge." There is much of this circumspection rooted in knowledge of one's limitations in Paul's closing counsel to Timothy at the end of 1 Timothy 1. There is great spiritual health and perspective here. Paul began the letter affirming the centrality of Christ's ministry through His own in the narrative of the universe, began the letter affirming the importance of who Timothy was in Christ, and the crucial nature of the battle he faced...

21 I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality. 22 Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people’s sins; keep yourself pure. 23 No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for your stomach’s sake and your frequent infirmities. Actor Dennis Haysbert has the total package. His deep, resonant voice allows him to command the attention and respect to a president or a master sergeant without raising his volume. His disciplined bearing so integrates with that persona that he has been credibly selling us insurance for years even without another major part to play. Imagine that gravitas brought to a specific, intense, intersessional focus in his role as Master Sergeant Jonas Blaine on the special forces show The Unit . Given his function as a noncommissioned officer, Blaine has no more respect than that which is vocationally required for life's higher-ups, but his ...

From 1 Timothy 5 – 21 I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ and the elect angels that you observe these things without prejudice, doing nothing with partiality. 22 Do not lay hands on anyone hastily, nor share in other people’s sins; keep yourself pure. Perhaps surprisingly given his humanist tendencies in The Story of Civilization series, Will Durant admits in his volume The Reformation , "Even the trust in reason is a precarious faith." His perspective is as enlightening as his metaphor, "We are all fragments of darkness groping for the sun." Inspired Scripture would perhaps be more optimistic about itself and the confidence with which the Christian believer can tread where we follow its precepts precisely, by grace. Even so, within its pages, Durant's variety of caution and confession is not unknown. In 1 Timothy 5:21-22, the mentor Paul has been used in the book's opening salvo to charge Timothy with confronting and uprooting misbegotten ...

I Timothy 5 – 19 Do not receive an accusation against an elder except from two or three witnesses. 20 Those who are sinning rebuke in the presence of all, that the rest also may fear. In Founding Brothers , historian Joseph Ellis points out an adolescent tendency. He says in that state we either tend to revere our leaders unreasonably, or we castigate them unmercifully if they fail to meet our lofty expectations. So it is that he approaches his subjects in America's revolutionary era as real humans subject to both inspiration and weakness. And so it is, perhaps, that Paul warns Timothy about handling accusations against spiritual leaders. Surely if we can tend to mythologize political demigods, those from whom we receive instruction and example related to the ideals of God's Word are subject to the same treatment. They can sin, and Paul says the sin of biblical elders is to be taken seriously. Knowing our hearts, we can also be aware of the Ellis sort of sin toward them. ...

From 1 Timothy 5 – 17 Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine. 18 For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain,” and, “The laborer is worthy of his wages.” I recently completed an intriguing romp through Kenneth W. Osbeck's 101 Hymn Stories in which he delves into the personalities and circumstances behind the Christian faith's most enduring songs. Of the peerless blind songstress Fanny Crosby he writes that she never composed without praying fervently first. She maintained this habit, apparently, while composing 8000 hymns. I consider this sweet, beguiling mix of humility and enthusiasm as I approach 1 Timothy 5:17-18. Considerations of God's Word are typically my oasis of grace. Intimacy and insight typically come fairly easily for me there. To be sure, I labor elsewhere to discipline my body and mind to even marginal results. Yet before the Word, His grac...

From James 3 – 13 Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by good conduct that his works are done in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. 15 This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. 16 For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. 17 But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. 18 Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. Charles Spurgeon cautions in his sermon "The Blood-Letting" especially on those who want to know every detail of evil's origin and workings but neglect their own salvation: "You trifle with subtleties while you neglect certainties." James 3 may be offering a similar reorientation. The chapter begins by warning those who wo...