1 Timothy 6:13 – Audience of One
I urge you in the sight of God… 1 Timothy 6:13, New King James Version
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community feels compelled to draw an important distinction. "It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is," he insists. But rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on Earth.”
Paul and Timothy, I think, would recognize this deliberate shift toward the vertical. I see it in a pronounced way as 1 Timothy 6:12 melds into the next verse. There is great beauty, and ready encouragement in the fact that the veteran apostle offers his younger disciple a buoy in remembering what Timothy confessed before witnesses.
God's acts in the external, especially in human community, can be an analgesic to our swollen egos and fears. Timothy, prone to timidity to the point of stomach upsets, can no doubt use this grounding in sensory experience. Recalling what God has done in our lives through and in front of humans can rescue Timothy's heirs from the same morbid introspection.
Once we begin to peek over the ramparts of our self-centeredness to our place in community, once we begin to remember that we live this life for more than the easing of our fears and insecurities, the prompt of 1 Timothy 6:13 would have us grow beyond the perspective offered by a human audience.
They can, to be sure, affirm God's work. They can, to be sure, offer opportunities for the expression of our theology. But comparatively, Paul rushes onward toward what comes down to us as verse 13, even crowds of believers are not worth mentioning as motivation. When he really wants to anchor Timothy's sense of purpose, and ours, Paul reminds us that we act in the sight of God.
How easy is it to stay stuck in the middle? Perhaps we have progressed beyond complete introversion. Perhaps we have escaped the enemy's weighty condemnation that we have nothing to offer. Perhaps, praise be to God, we have seen the impact of His love through us as it begins to blossom into varieties of joy, and peace, and kindness, and gentleness, and self-control. Perhaps, as a result of what He has done, men begin to speak well of us.
Make haste, then, to the soul's sanctuary of 1 Timothy 6:13. Only there, as we see as we are seen by our Creator and Sustainer, can we hope to avoid being warped by the human reactions we receive. Forsake that time in prayer and in His Word in particular, and we have no stronger will than the plants which will tilt the way sunlight will nurture them. The trouble with our part in the analogy is that we will lean toward the ego's feeding at the expense of the soul itself. We will readily engage popularity and affirmation, the echoes of human witnesses, at the expense of our root system in Christ.
Might our urges, the ones inside us and the ones offered like 1 Timothy 6:13 from our holiest mentors, be ever more deeply to know and be known by God Himself. As nice as the particular accommodations are of the ways in which we are used in work, and ministry, and marriage, might our lasting vapor trail be that of Peter and John from their enemies in the Book of Acts. These have been with Jesus. Might men say that, like our Master, we did good while we were among them, but that we were ever fixating on our heart's one desire, to make much of Jesus.
Ironically, as we prepare to shed stagnant company like molting layers and to delight in Christ alone, He prepares the real community our hearts crave, and us for that community. We might even make an idol of being His solitary prophet, but the invitation of His Word into the most authentic basis for fellowship is insistent.“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that," Paul revealed in Romans 8:29, "He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Satisfied in Him, conscious of our accountability to Him, we then find we have family. It's a boy! And a girl, and a boy, and a girl, all of whom we will have eternity to get to know as we mutually admire and serve Christ.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community feels compelled to draw an important distinction. "It is not that God is the spectator and sharer of our present life, howsoever important that is," he insists. But rather that we are the reverent listeners and participants in God’s action in the sacred story, the history of the Christ on Earth.”
Paul and Timothy, I think, would recognize this deliberate shift toward the vertical. I see it in a pronounced way as 1 Timothy 6:12 melds into the next verse. There is great beauty, and ready encouragement in the fact that the veteran apostle offers his younger disciple a buoy in remembering what Timothy confessed before witnesses.
God's acts in the external, especially in human community, can be an analgesic to our swollen egos and fears. Timothy, prone to timidity to the point of stomach upsets, can no doubt use this grounding in sensory experience. Recalling what God has done in our lives through and in front of humans can rescue Timothy's heirs from the same morbid introspection.
Once we begin to peek over the ramparts of our self-centeredness to our place in community, once we begin to remember that we live this life for more than the easing of our fears and insecurities, the prompt of 1 Timothy 6:13 would have us grow beyond the perspective offered by a human audience.
They can, to be sure, affirm God's work. They can, to be sure, offer opportunities for the expression of our theology. But comparatively, Paul rushes onward toward what comes down to us as verse 13, even crowds of believers are not worth mentioning as motivation. When he really wants to anchor Timothy's sense of purpose, and ours, Paul reminds us that we act in the sight of God.
How easy is it to stay stuck in the middle? Perhaps we have progressed beyond complete introversion. Perhaps we have escaped the enemy's weighty condemnation that we have nothing to offer. Perhaps, praise be to God, we have seen the impact of His love through us as it begins to blossom into varieties of joy, and peace, and kindness, and gentleness, and self-control. Perhaps, as a result of what He has done, men begin to speak well of us.
Make haste, then, to the soul's sanctuary of 1 Timothy 6:13. Only there, as we see as we are seen by our Creator and Sustainer, can we hope to avoid being warped by the human reactions we receive. Forsake that time in prayer and in His Word in particular, and we have no stronger will than the plants which will tilt the way sunlight will nurture them. The trouble with our part in the analogy is that we will lean toward the ego's feeding at the expense of the soul itself. We will readily engage popularity and affirmation, the echoes of human witnesses, at the expense of our root system in Christ.
Might our urges, the ones inside us and the ones offered like 1 Timothy 6:13 from our holiest mentors, be ever more deeply to know and be known by God Himself. As nice as the particular accommodations are of the ways in which we are used in work, and ministry, and marriage, might our lasting vapor trail be that of Peter and John from their enemies in the Book of Acts. These have been with Jesus. Might men say that, like our Master, we did good while we were among them, but that we were ever fixating on our heart's one desire, to make much of Jesus.
Ironically, as we prepare to shed stagnant company like molting layers and to delight in Christ alone, He prepares the real community our hearts crave, and us for that community. We might even make an idol of being His solitary prophet, but the invitation of His Word into the most authentic basis for fellowship is insistent.“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that," Paul revealed in Romans 8:29, "He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Satisfied in Him, conscious of our accountability to Him, we then find we have family. It's a boy! And a girl, and a boy, and a girl, all of whom we will have eternity to get to know as we mutually admire and serve Christ.
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