2 Timothy 1:4 – Seven of the Purposes of Godly Tears
3 I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day, 4 greatly desiring to see you, being mindful of your tears… From 2 Timothy 1, New King James Version
As much as I love the pith and penetration of a good quote, or a bad one to make the opposite point, I don't always source them well. Thus, we will have to leave a sentiment I came across with respect to tears for the angels to credit, were more likely for Christ to hold to account.
The writer said tears are OK, but that when they are finished, one still has to figure out what to do. Casting Crowns in one of my favorite songs and albums, both titled Between the Altar and the Door gives a holy sheen to the idea that tears are temporary. They are, the song laments, often dry before we get leave the floor of our repentance.
Paul has a different idea about tears, though. Their purpose is apparently more lasting than the evaporation of saltwater from our cheeks or the spasm of an emotional outburst. Paul the supreme logician doesn't dismiss tears as evidence of an extraneous appeal to emotion. Mindfulness, purposeful awareness, of Timothy's tears long after the actual lacrimal output has evaporated is part of the progression of 2 Timothy 1.
Paul moves seamlessly from assurance, to prayer, to affectionate relationship, to recalling tears. Let's consider seven purposes for godly tears that go deeper than interfering with the pragmatics of figuring out what to do.
1. Godly tears affirm our likeness to the Father.
The inspired author of Psalm 56:8 finds assurance and resilience in the Father's reaction to his tears. The tears themselves, says the verse, are preserved in a bottle. They don't evaporate with the pain of the moment or the memory of men. Our Heavenly Father keeps them as trophies to His sufficiency and purpose. Likewise, that psalmist says in the same gracious spirit his wanderings are preserved.
Thus, as Christ continues His sanctifying, softening work in us, Paul shows this Fatherly empathy is one result. We remember and well over the tears of those we care about. Rather than applying efficiency's razor to the way hardship and vulnerability could have been avoided, even the wanderings of those we influence our precious to us.
By the Father's grace, we are being conformed to the likeness of the One Who recorded the wanderings in the Book of Numbers and constantly refers back to the Exodus. In others meandering, sometimes maudlin stories, we will begin to see that there tears soften our godly reactions.
2. Godly tears affirm our likeness to the Son.
Jesus cried. The same One Who set His face toward Jerusalem also cried for that city. The same One Who with determination for joy focused on the Last Supper although it was just before the ordeal of His Passion also wept for Lazarus. In not dismissing the urge to tears in ourselves or others as a passing, unbecoming stranger We affirm our likeness to Him.
3. Godly tears affirm our likeness to the Spirit.
How crucial, friends, is the battle plan against the intentions of the devil in the city of Ephesus? The intensity of every word of this inspired battle manual that comes to us as 2 Timothy is redoubled when we rejoice that the Holy Spirit knew the import of His tactics would extend beyond that city in modern-day Turkey and the life of the original writer and recipients. Yet, there is time to take a affectionate note of tears as well as tactics.
If we, then, begin to walk by the Spirit, this walk involves more than getting from point A to point B. In our relationships, and our writing, in our prayers, we will tarry with tenderness. Not only will we dwell with others and gentleness in their time of pain and need, we will recall these times with them and, with discipline and discretion, with a wider audience where appropriate.
4. Godly tears are a shibboleth of a shared history of authentic relationship.
These tears, no doubt, are a password and passion between the two men. Remembrance of them draws two busy warriors of the faith out of the stream of the immediate and into a time when they were real about vulnerability with each other. They can, at least for a moment, remember with Ecclesiastes holistic perspective that there is a time to weep and a time to dance, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
5. Godly tears supply a moat protecting from the onslaught of legalistic manipulation.
Paul's priorities are urgent. Paul's mind is shrewd. Pausing to remember Timothy's tears, along with pausing to remember Timothy's stomach ailment in 1 Timothy, is a reminder to him and to us that he is dealing with a man and not an animate tool. Timothy has limits, and tears are a reminder. Timothy has passions, and tears are a reminder.
The face Timothy presents to Ephesus is not Paul's to operate by remote control. Tears once tracked it, and they will track it again. Likewise, times of tears remind us that those we would move in this or that direction for the most earnest of Kingdom-building intentions are humans. They are, Scripturally, but dust. Perhaps more fragile, they are subject to the ebb and flow of emotion.
6. Godly tears provide a marker of the intercessors and repentant.
As a priest, Ezekiel is an expert on the our realities of the Law. In the book named after him, God helps Ezekiel to see the intent and trajectory of men's hearts by telling him in Ezekiel 9 to look for tears. Tears are a marker, God says, of those who sigh and cry over the abominations of the culture they represent.
I notice both sighing and crying are indicators of election, distinction, and repentance. There is no contest for the loudness of our sobs, or the volume of our tears. Some will cry little. Some will cry much according to the norms with which they were raised and the wiring or rewiring God gave them. Yet, by His grace, tears show that they care more for His glory than for their dignity.
7. Godly tears are an indicator for self-examination.
Jerry Bridges was right in Pursuit of Holiness. "Even our tears of repentance," he confessed, "need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb." It is so with us, brothers and sisters, even if these other six purposes abound in the tears we shared. If the motives that prick our sorrow are the purest ever known to man, if we weep completely for the offended glory of God, before those tears ever reach our cheek, they still become a possible means of Satan's manipulation.
He will not, to be certain, stand afar off in pity or reverence. God may prevent his interference for a time, but he will have a next play in response to our tears. Perhaps he will addict us to the sympathy of men we are likely to receive. Perhaps he will enthrone us in judgment over those who fail to cry, or cry less, or cry too loudly, or don't confess with enough Scripture, or, we judge, hide their personal repentance behind too much Scriptural quotation.
The enemy of our souls who despises the holy tears he cannot shed will inflate our expectations of how we would have others respond to our tears, and as quickly as possible he will co-mingle our personal sense of injured ought with our original, ephemeral plea that God's Kingdom, and His will be done.
As much as I love the pith and penetration of a good quote, or a bad one to make the opposite point, I don't always source them well. Thus, we will have to leave a sentiment I came across with respect to tears for the angels to credit, were more likely for Christ to hold to account.
The writer said tears are OK, but that when they are finished, one still has to figure out what to do. Casting Crowns in one of my favorite songs and albums, both titled Between the Altar and the Door gives a holy sheen to the idea that tears are temporary. They are, the song laments, often dry before we get leave the floor of our repentance.
Paul has a different idea about tears, though. Their purpose is apparently more lasting than the evaporation of saltwater from our cheeks or the spasm of an emotional outburst. Paul the supreme logician doesn't dismiss tears as evidence of an extraneous appeal to emotion. Mindfulness, purposeful awareness, of Timothy's tears long after the actual lacrimal output has evaporated is part of the progression of 2 Timothy 1.
Paul moves seamlessly from assurance, to prayer, to affectionate relationship, to recalling tears. Let's consider seven purposes for godly tears that go deeper than interfering with the pragmatics of figuring out what to do.
1. Godly tears affirm our likeness to the Father.
The inspired author of Psalm 56:8 finds assurance and resilience in the Father's reaction to his tears. The tears themselves, says the verse, are preserved in a bottle. They don't evaporate with the pain of the moment or the memory of men. Our Heavenly Father keeps them as trophies to His sufficiency and purpose. Likewise, that psalmist says in the same gracious spirit his wanderings are preserved.
Thus, as Christ continues His sanctifying, softening work in us, Paul shows this Fatherly empathy is one result. We remember and well over the tears of those we care about. Rather than applying efficiency's razor to the way hardship and vulnerability could have been avoided, even the wanderings of those we influence our precious to us.
By the Father's grace, we are being conformed to the likeness of the One Who recorded the wanderings in the Book of Numbers and constantly refers back to the Exodus. In others meandering, sometimes maudlin stories, we will begin to see that there tears soften our godly reactions.
2. Godly tears affirm our likeness to the Son.
Jesus cried. The same One Who set His face toward Jerusalem also cried for that city. The same One Who with determination for joy focused on the Last Supper although it was just before the ordeal of His Passion also wept for Lazarus. In not dismissing the urge to tears in ourselves or others as a passing, unbecoming stranger We affirm our likeness to Him.
3. Godly tears affirm our likeness to the Spirit.
How crucial, friends, is the battle plan against the intentions of the devil in the city of Ephesus? The intensity of every word of this inspired battle manual that comes to us as 2 Timothy is redoubled when we rejoice that the Holy Spirit knew the import of His tactics would extend beyond that city in modern-day Turkey and the life of the original writer and recipients. Yet, there is time to take a affectionate note of tears as well as tactics.
If we, then, begin to walk by the Spirit, this walk involves more than getting from point A to point B. In our relationships, and our writing, in our prayers, we will tarry with tenderness. Not only will we dwell with others and gentleness in their time of pain and need, we will recall these times with them and, with discipline and discretion, with a wider audience where appropriate.
4. Godly tears are a shibboleth of a shared history of authentic relationship.
These tears, no doubt, are a password and passion between the two men. Remembrance of them draws two busy warriors of the faith out of the stream of the immediate and into a time when they were real about vulnerability with each other. They can, at least for a moment, remember with Ecclesiastes holistic perspective that there is a time to weep and a time to dance, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.
5. Godly tears supply a moat protecting from the onslaught of legalistic manipulation.
Paul's priorities are urgent. Paul's mind is shrewd. Pausing to remember Timothy's tears, along with pausing to remember Timothy's stomach ailment in 1 Timothy, is a reminder to him and to us that he is dealing with a man and not an animate tool. Timothy has limits, and tears are a reminder. Timothy has passions, and tears are a reminder.
The face Timothy presents to Ephesus is not Paul's to operate by remote control. Tears once tracked it, and they will track it again. Likewise, times of tears remind us that those we would move in this or that direction for the most earnest of Kingdom-building intentions are humans. They are, Scripturally, but dust. Perhaps more fragile, they are subject to the ebb and flow of emotion.
6. Godly tears provide a marker of the intercessors and repentant.
As a priest, Ezekiel is an expert on the our realities of the Law. In the book named after him, God helps Ezekiel to see the intent and trajectory of men's hearts by telling him in Ezekiel 9 to look for tears. Tears are a marker, God says, of those who sigh and cry over the abominations of the culture they represent.
I notice both sighing and crying are indicators of election, distinction, and repentance. There is no contest for the loudness of our sobs, or the volume of our tears. Some will cry little. Some will cry much according to the norms with which they were raised and the wiring or rewiring God gave them. Yet, by His grace, tears show that they care more for His glory than for their dignity.
7. Godly tears are an indicator for self-examination.
Jerry Bridges was right in Pursuit of Holiness. "Even our tears of repentance," he confessed, "need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb." It is so with us, brothers and sisters, even if these other six purposes abound in the tears we shared. If the motives that prick our sorrow are the purest ever known to man, if we weep completely for the offended glory of God, before those tears ever reach our cheek, they still become a possible means of Satan's manipulation.
He will not, to be certain, stand afar off in pity or reverence. God may prevent his interference for a time, but he will have a next play in response to our tears. Perhaps he will addict us to the sympathy of men we are likely to receive. Perhaps he will enthrone us in judgment over those who fail to cry, or cry less, or cry too loudly, or don't confess with enough Scripture, or, we judge, hide their personal repentance behind too much Scriptural quotation.
The enemy of our souls who despises the holy tears he cannot shed will inflate our expectations of how we would have others respond to our tears, and as quickly as possible he will co-mingle our personal sense of injured ought with our original, ephemeral plea that God's Kingdom, and His will be done.
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