1 Timothy 6:16 – Make It So.
13 I urge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus who witnessed the good confession before Pontius Pilate, 14 that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, 15 which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only [e]Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life author Richard Hofstadter laments among the conclusions of his work the division between men of thought and men of action. The two, he decides, are distinct works, with thinkers compromising themselves and their powers the nearer they get to enforcing policy from them. Pure thinkers, meanwhile, he says, dripped with a kind of condescension toward those who actually tried to draw concrete, actionable conclusions.
Blessedly, the apostle Paul reminds us that the two capacities are one in Christ, and one in Christians. Desiring Timothy to grow into that wholeness, the apostle reminds him of this united duality. Christ deserves honor, yes. To Him belongs the worth of all the hymns, and all the sonnets. Every moment we can spare to assign and reassign Him the best of our thoughts is precious.
But to Christ also, Paul rejoices, belongs POWER. In Creation, He put the best of himself into action. On the cross, love became cosmic war and victory over the works of the devil. That power bespeaks still in the battles Timothy was undertaking in Ephesus, and the ones in which we join today. What we think about as we look at the pages in the Word, and pages about the Word is not divorced from the reality we encounter outside of them. He is Master of both. He will prove it by His power.
We prove continuity in Him even by our powerlessness. Each time it is in evidence, and our confession follows, His strength is made perfect in our weakness. Each time we reflect on just a little progress in His likeness and rejoice rather than mope His power proves present, and predictive of what is to come.
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life author Richard Hofstadter laments among the conclusions of his work the division between men of thought and men of action. The two, he decides, are distinct works, with thinkers compromising themselves and their powers the nearer they get to enforcing policy from them. Pure thinkers, meanwhile, he says, dripped with a kind of condescension toward those who actually tried to draw concrete, actionable conclusions.
Blessedly, the apostle Paul reminds us that the two capacities are one in Christ, and one in Christians. Desiring Timothy to grow into that wholeness, the apostle reminds him of this united duality. Christ deserves honor, yes. To Him belongs the worth of all the hymns, and all the sonnets. Every moment we can spare to assign and reassign Him the best of our thoughts is precious.
But to Christ also, Paul rejoices, belongs POWER. In Creation, He put the best of himself into action. On the cross, love became cosmic war and victory over the works of the devil. That power bespeaks still in the battles Timothy was undertaking in Ephesus, and the ones in which we join today. What we think about as we look at the pages in the Word, and pages about the Word is not divorced from the reality we encounter outside of them. He is Master of both. He will prove it by His power.
We prove continuity in Him even by our powerlessness. Each time it is in evidence, and our confession follows, His strength is made perfect in our weakness. Each time we reflect on just a little progress in His likeness and rejoice rather than mope His power proves present, and predictive of what is to come.
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