Timothy & Countering The Culture (part 31)

As one continues to consider the talk of riches and the desire to obtain them, substituting the love of money for the love of neighbor, Paul can be heard to go on to say that if you must engage in competition, “Compete well for the faith and lay hold of that eternal life you were called for and made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses” (1 Timothy 6:12).  It is when these words are heard as part of a call to be a counter-cultural witness, that surely they are better understood. 

Paul takes no issue with those that possess wealth, nor does he desire Timothy or other believers to look down upon them as part of the cosmic role reversal that takes place as the church rightly images out the tenets of its Lord.  Rather, as should be expected from Paul, he desires that encouragement and edification be the order of the day, with self-sacrifice and preferential treatment coming to the fore as the practice of love. 

That expectant tone can be heard when traveling a few lines further in the text and hearing “Command those who are rich in this world’s goods not to be haughty or to set their hope on riches, which are uncertain” (6:17a).  Why?  “For we have brought nothing into this world and so we cannot take a single thing out either.”  Rather, they are to set their hope “on God who richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment” (6:17b). 

Yes, it is the Creator God that should be looked upon as the ultimate patron, provide all things (not Caesar).  For this reason, and to their own benefit, “Tell them to do good, to be rich in good deeds” which are works of public benefaction, “to be generous givers, sharing with others.  In this way they will save up a treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the future and so lay hold of what is truly life” (6:18-19).  They will lay hold of what is truly life, rather than the fleeting and fickle notion of public honor which is normally the measure of a man, as he goes about providing a firm foundation for himself and his family, that his honor may go on and on.  This pales in comparison to that which honors Jesus.

In beginning to round out this study, having explored the counter cultural elements in Paul’s letter to Timothy, and having heard Paul instruct Timothy (and by extension the household congregations in which Timothy has a hand) in an engagement that stands against the prevailing culture, and doing so for the purpose of transformation spurred by the witness of service and sacrifice, it is right to marvel at the subtle genius of the cosmos encompassing, restorative, and often paradoxical plans of the God of creation.  One is reminded that while yes there is a commandment to come out and be separate, that separation is only a portion of the preparation for a full engagement with this creation that groans for the revelation of the sons of the covenant God and the ultimate re-creation that is heralded by that revelation. 

Why Scripture? (part 1)

…useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training righteousness, that the person dedicated to God may be capable and equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16b-17  (NET)

The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments exist for the purpose of representing the Creator God to His covenant people.  Though there is a tendency to look to Scripture to grab a verse or a story in order to find an application to a situation in which one may find himself, doing so may be a matter of getting things out of order.  The traditions of the covenant people of the Creator God, the prophetic utterances, the wisdom literature, and the theologizing about the meaning of the Resurrection that helped to shape the church community in the years following the Christ-event, do not exist primarily to serve man and to inform man how to live; but rather, they exist primarily to reveal the covenant God, and in that revealing, to cause His people to take steps to bring Him glory. 

This revelation for the purpose of knowing the Creator God is given so that those who are supposed to bear His image might be able to do so rightly.  This, of course, is why believers undertake and so highly value theology, for one cannot serve the Creator God, with a knowledge of His purposes, if He is not known primarily as revealed through that which is recorded in the book to which is ascribed the influence and inspiration of His life-giving Spirit. 

Believers do not approach the Scriptures so as to first learn about themselves, to gain encouragement for themselves, or to find out what the Creator God has in store for them.  All of these things take place as secondary results.  The believer approaches the Scriptures in order to learn about the covenant God.  Because humans are made in His image, it is in learning about the covenant God that they are able to learn about themselves.  This is encouraging because it is possible to learn that the Creator God has a purpose for His image-bearers, and the Scriptures provide believers with the hope that He is at work, quite faithfully, to bring about those purposes in his image-bearers, for His image-bearers, and through His image-bearers. 

If one was ever take a moment to consider why it is that believers gather together as Christians, in what is referred to as “church” or “worship” services, it is in this realization that the answer is to be found.  The author of the letter to the Hebrews is adamant about the regular gathering together of those that call Jesus Lord, as he writes “And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works, not abandoning our own meetings…encouraging each other” (10:24-25a). 

When looked at on the surface and from the outside, by those that do not yet call Jesus Lord, one would have to be compelled to admit that these regular (predominantly Sunday) gatherings as individual bodies in representation of the reality of the existing and coming kingdom of the Creator God, is quite the peculiar practice.  Naturally, it is as peculiar as the very message upon which the church is built, which is that of an eminently shameful and ghastly crucifixion, the extraordinarily ridiculous notion of a man’s resurrection from the dead, and the somewhat ludicrous idea that those two things, taken together and then punctuated by an ascension, prove that the crucified man was the very embodiment of the Creator God and is the sovereign and ruling Lord of all in a kingdom that has been inaugurated on earth and awaits its final consummation in the coming together of the Creator God’s realm of existence (heaven) and man’s realm of existence (earth).