1 Timothy 6:20 – Purpose-Driven Speech
20 O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge…
"Every culture," inveighs Tim Keller in the July 16 entry of God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "has deep 'background beliefs' about life that are so taken for granted that they are invisible to us as beliefs. We think of them," he admits, "as 'just the way things are.'"
Inhaling the life-giving, healthfully contrarian spirit of Proverbs 12:1 and 15, Keller counters, "No one becomes wise unless they allow these beliefs to be examined and challenged, supremely by God's Word but also by teachers, colleagues, family members, and friends. If you always know best, you are STUPID.
This, as 1 Timothy 6 winds down, is the necessity of purpose-driven speech. Just as the previous phrase in verse 20 can be used to muzzle us in artificial, legalistic gloom which would, in speaking, quote nothing but Bible verses for fear of accidentally drifting into idle babbling, Paul shows that such an overreaction is, in fact, the height of self-centeredness.
Failing to speak up to a culture trapped in its own false assumptions, in Timothy's case a church culture trapped in its own false assumptions, because we might land a word amiss, is like the temple officials failing to help the beaten and bloodied traveler in the story of the good Samaritan because they might become unclean in the process.
It is our place, then, to contradict words and implicit beliefs which flow from idolatrous affections. It is our place to seek God's face on behalf of those so trapped, to seek His timing for when and how to declare the confronting freedom available in Christ.
We cannot read inspired Paul for long, here or elsewhere, and delude ourselves into thinking that a Christ-like desire to make peace means taking the culture's assumptions at face value. If we get an accurate picture of the prisoners of spiritual warfare which so many of the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, our friends and family, are, we will go to war in Christ's strength and valor to set such captives free.
Circumspectly discipline in what we say and what we don't, examining our own phrasing for unconscious acquiescence to the beliefs around us, we deploy a sharpened sword to hack off chains on the minds and members of those around us. In fact, just as Paul's warning to Timothy about how easy it is to drift into babbling and how necessary it is to speak the right words are so close together, the weapon we use to free those we care about can be our own testimony.
The testimony we blow the dust off of and pull from in ancient armory of how Christ perfected our beliefs decades ago is dull and ineffectual indeed. But when we come fresh from time in Christ's Word and before His face and confess to the culture about aspects of our thinking and speech which were still bound as of this morning, THERE is present power.
Realizing how prone we are, Christian, to be bound and stay bound, realizing how incessantly active Christ's grace is in freeing us from such entrapment, therein is our holy restlessness to look beyond the surface labels the culture would assign. Therein is our insouciance to question, calmly and in good humor, what the culture calls knowledge. Real people are suffering if we do not. Revelation of Christ's glory in our sphere is irrepressible if we do.
"Every culture," inveighs Tim Keller in the July 16 entry of God's Wisdom for Navigating Life, "has deep 'background beliefs' about life that are so taken for granted that they are invisible to us as beliefs. We think of them," he admits, "as 'just the way things are.'"
Inhaling the life-giving, healthfully contrarian spirit of Proverbs 12:1 and 15, Keller counters, "No one becomes wise unless they allow these beliefs to be examined and challenged, supremely by God's Word but also by teachers, colleagues, family members, and friends. If you always know best, you are STUPID.
This, as 1 Timothy 6 winds down, is the necessity of purpose-driven speech. Just as the previous phrase in verse 20 can be used to muzzle us in artificial, legalistic gloom which would, in speaking, quote nothing but Bible verses for fear of accidentally drifting into idle babbling, Paul shows that such an overreaction is, in fact, the height of self-centeredness.
Failing to speak up to a culture trapped in its own false assumptions, in Timothy's case a church culture trapped in its own false assumptions, because we might land a word amiss, is like the temple officials failing to help the beaten and bloodied traveler in the story of the good Samaritan because they might become unclean in the process.
It is our place, then, to contradict words and implicit beliefs which flow from idolatrous affections. It is our place to seek God's face on behalf of those so trapped, to seek His timing for when and how to declare the confronting freedom available in Christ.
We cannot read inspired Paul for long, here or elsewhere, and delude ourselves into thinking that a Christ-like desire to make peace means taking the culture's assumptions at face value. If we get an accurate picture of the prisoners of spiritual warfare which so many of the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, our friends and family, are, we will go to war in Christ's strength and valor to set such captives free.
Circumspectly discipline in what we say and what we don't, examining our own phrasing for unconscious acquiescence to the beliefs around us, we deploy a sharpened sword to hack off chains on the minds and members of those around us. In fact, just as Paul's warning to Timothy about how easy it is to drift into babbling and how necessary it is to speak the right words are so close together, the weapon we use to free those we care about can be our own testimony.
The testimony we blow the dust off of and pull from in ancient armory of how Christ perfected our beliefs decades ago is dull and ineffectual indeed. But when we come fresh from time in Christ's Word and before His face and confess to the culture about aspects of our thinking and speech which were still bound as of this morning, THERE is present power.
Realizing how prone we are, Christian, to be bound and stay bound, realizing how incessantly active Christ's grace is in freeing us from such entrapment, therein is our holy restlessness to look beyond the surface labels the culture would assign. Therein is our insouciance to question, calmly and in good humor, what the culture calls knowledge. Real people are suffering if we do not. Revelation of Christ's glory in our sphere is irrepressible if we do.
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