1 Timothy 6:18 – The Honing of Habits to Be Used by Grace
17 Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy. 18 Let them do good, that they be rich in good works…
Screwtape is livid in the last exchange of CS Lewis's epistolary between demons. The human patient whose doom they hoped to secure has passed into Glory. Screwtape the master tempter belittles his nephew in failure for any consolation he hoped to secure as the patient passed from one world to the next.
He mocks, "Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy," he sets up."But that is the cursed thing; the gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. But when he saw them," concedes Screwtape, "he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not 'Who are you?' but 'So it was you all the time.'”
Doubtless there is a precursor to this ultimate demonic disgust in transitions toward which Paul is exhorting in 1 Timothy 6:17-18. Screwtape would prefer that Christ's sanctification process always make something new in the sense of being alien, awkward, ill-fitting, and unrecognizable. Alas for him, and gratefully for Christians new and experienced, it often is not so. He deposits, as one preacher put it, a new engine in the same car. As dangerous as riches can be, and Paul has spent much of 1 Timothy 6 warning against their grip, even their chase can be used of God as He changes their direction. Thus Paul says those who at one time sought material riches which are passing away can be rich in good works.
That is, whatever his redemptive about the discipline they showed, about the perspective they insisted on to step back from their daily processes and consider whether habits were building toward their goal, these things can be even more used in the Kingdom of God. Just as Christ redeemed Paul's training and habits in legal reasoning, just as He justifiably commandeered the patience and heartiness of fishermen for His better purposes, so He can use many of our experiences and much of our conditioning in daily life before redemption and what we would clumsily think of as in non-spiritual pursuits to accomplish His purposes.
Once he does, as he does, even before our ultimate promotion to Glory, we can look back on our experiences as the patient does in The Screwtape Letters and rejoice, "So it was you all the time."
This vertical epiphany can transform our horizontal dealings as well. This sense of Christ's sovereign continuity can preempt our tendency to try to mold all Christians the same way, or try to prove their redemption by the way in which they entirely renounce what generated enthusiasm in them before Christ captivated them. Instead, we can watch in wonder as in the phrasing of Francis Chan in Crazy Love, He deals as uniquely with others as He has with us. Where He chooses, He can discomfit to deepen faith's roots and thwart pride, as with using Paul in places where his Jewish credentials meant nothing. But even where this happens, He has usually given such an abiding sense of his lifelong purposes that any expansion of purpose is more adventurous than awkward.
Screwtape is livid in the last exchange of CS Lewis's epistolary between demons. The human patient whose doom they hoped to secure has passed into Glory. Screwtape the master tempter belittles his nephew in failure for any consolation he hoped to secure as the patient passed from one world to the next.
He mocks, "Perhaps you had hoped that the awe and strangeness of it would dash his joy," he sets up."But that is the cursed thing; the gods are strange to mortal eyes, and yet they are not strange. But when he saw them," concedes Screwtape, "he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not 'Who are you?' but 'So it was you all the time.'”
Doubtless there is a precursor to this ultimate demonic disgust in transitions toward which Paul is exhorting in 1 Timothy 6:17-18. Screwtape would prefer that Christ's sanctification process always make something new in the sense of being alien, awkward, ill-fitting, and unrecognizable. Alas for him, and gratefully for Christians new and experienced, it often is not so. He deposits, as one preacher put it, a new engine in the same car. As dangerous as riches can be, and Paul has spent much of 1 Timothy 6 warning against their grip, even their chase can be used of God as He changes their direction. Thus Paul says those who at one time sought material riches which are passing away can be rich in good works.
That is, whatever his redemptive about the discipline they showed, about the perspective they insisted on to step back from their daily processes and consider whether habits were building toward their goal, these things can be even more used in the Kingdom of God. Just as Christ redeemed Paul's training and habits in legal reasoning, just as He justifiably commandeered the patience and heartiness of fishermen for His better purposes, so He can use many of our experiences and much of our conditioning in daily life before redemption and what we would clumsily think of as in non-spiritual pursuits to accomplish His purposes.
Once he does, as he does, even before our ultimate promotion to Glory, we can look back on our experiences as the patient does in The Screwtape Letters and rejoice, "So it was you all the time."
This vertical epiphany can transform our horizontal dealings as well. This sense of Christ's sovereign continuity can preempt our tendency to try to mold all Christians the same way, or try to prove their redemption by the way in which they entirely renounce what generated enthusiasm in them before Christ captivated them. Instead, we can watch in wonder as in the phrasing of Francis Chan in Crazy Love, He deals as uniquely with others as He has with us. Where He chooses, He can discomfit to deepen faith's roots and thwart pride, as with using Paul in places where his Jewish credentials meant nothing. But even where this happens, He has usually given such an abiding sense of his lifelong purposes that any expansion of purpose is more adventurous than awkward.
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