Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Timothy 1-4.

There is a lot in today’s passage which I want to write about.  I am not sure I will be able to fit it all together.  Paul writes that God has given us a Spirit which does not make us timid.  Rather, it gives us power, love, and self-discipline.  Paul then says something which expands on that.  Because of the Spirit which God has given us we know the God whom we have believed and can be confident that He will guard that which we have entrusted to Him.  And because we know those things we should embrace the self-discipline to which His Spirit leads us.  The self-discipline, power, and love God’s Spirit gives us are intertwined. The love compels us to have self-discipline and the power both allows us to have that self-discipline and is only fully expressed when we exercise that self-discipline.  Paul goes on to write that love and self-discipline should keep us from godless chatter and stupid, foolish arguments.  So, while God’s Spirit does not make us timid, it also does not make us quarrelsome.  Let us be kind to everyone and neither resentful of others, nor stirring up resentment within them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Timothy 5-6.

Paul instructs Timothy to treat everyone with appropriate respect, those older than himself as his mother or father, those his age or younger as brothers and sisters.  We should take this advice to heart and treat our fellow believers with similar respect.  I wanted to start off with that just as this passage does.  However, the main thing which struck me is Paul'[s final instruction to Timothy in this letter.  Paul finishes his instruction to Timothy by telling him to turn away from godless chatter and from ideas which some falsely call knowledge.  From this we see that even in the early Church there were those who styled themselves intellectuals who sought to deny the Gospel in the name of “{knowledge”, or “science”.  There will always be those who are sure that they know something which proves some aspect of what has always been taught as part of the Gospel is not so.  We should not get caught up in debating what such “{knowledge” says about our faith, instead trust that God has made His will made known and that those who went before us in faith were not fooled by man-made stories.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  1 Timothy 1-4.

One thing that has often taken my attention, and that of many other commentators, is what Paul means when he tells Timothy to command certain people to not devote themselves to “myths and endless genealogies.”  I have seen several different interpretations of what sort of genealogies Paul meant.  However, today it struck me that it does not matter, because in his next sentence Paul tells us what the problem with them was.  They promoted controversial speculations which distracted from advancing God’s work.  So, any debate which does not promote the love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith should be avoided.  If we look for a reading of Scripture, for a loophole, to find how what we want to do does not violate God'[s law, we have missed the point.  If we do not see how what we want to do advances God’s work, we should do something else.

Paul goes on to give instructions for how we should behave and the qualifications for Church leaders.  He gives somewhat different instructions for men and women and we can debate whether what he writes means that Church leadership roles should only be filled by men.  However, I want to note that ALL of the things he describes can apply to all Believers.  Paul starts this section by requesting that we pray for, intercede for, petition God for, and offer thanksgiving to God for all people, but especially for those in positions of government authority.  Then he writes that men should pray and women should dress modestly, but really both men and women should pray and dress modestly.  We should adorn ourselves with good deeds rather than with fancy hairstyles, attention grabbing jewelry, or high fashion clothes.  Paul goes on to describe the attributes we should look for in elders (overseers as translated here) and deacons in the Church.  Even in the context it is clear that all of the qualifications he gives are so that those holding these positions of authority in the Church can be held up as examples for other Believers, especially new Believers, to follow.  We should be faithful to our spouse, self-controlled, respectable, and hospitable. We should be gentle rather than violent or quarrelsome.  We should not be lovers of money nor drink to excess.  We should strive to be worthy of respect and not talk maliciously about others.  Even the one qualification for the position of Church elder which not everyone should have is one at which we should all seek.  That one is the ability to teach.  We may not all be called upon to teach, but we should seek to be able to do so in case the occasion arises where we need to do so.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.