1 Timothy 6:11 – A Pause for Identification

"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, Paul tells Timothy what is good. Contentment in Christ is – great – gain. Pause. Refresh. Charge on against the plows of the devil.

If that was the isthmus between two chasms of fire, the four-word beginning of 1 Timothy 6:12 is even smaller and more powerful. He reminds Timothy who is in Christ, and in a way that is especially meaningful coming from a fatherly mentor. Paul calls Timothy, younger Timothy, less experienced Timothy, more timid Timothy, a man of God. He has shed what Timothy might have once been in his eyes, a kid with potential, clay to be molded in Paul's image if Paul was less of a genuine spiritual leader, to see and express what Timothy is in God's eyes. Timothy is, Paul declares, a man of God in his own right.

Have we four words to spare to that effect? Are our warnings so dire are our habits so hardened toward those to whom we see ourselves as indispensable that we cannot bequeath who they already ARE before their Creator? The people we make our projects, then, might not be the ones lacking in maturity. The people we make our projects, then, might not be the ones less than fully aware of their identity in Christ. Have our intermediate, even worthwhile, works become an end in themselves such that we don't want to place them in God's hands directly and speak what He has done and is doing?

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