1 Timothy 6:11-16

Friends, welcome back as we continue through First Timothy on this Tuesday of a new week.
A reminder,
just housekeeping stuff.
We will meet tomorrow.
At least that is the plan.
It’s dependent upon my schedule,
which is a little bit in flux,
and then we will not meet
on Thursday.
So just a heads up.
And then we won’t be meeting next week.
So we’ll try to make some progress today.
We are in the 11th verse of the sixth chapter,
the final chapter here of First Timothy.
Great.
You know,
Paul has a lot of really good writing, Michael,
but when Paul gets to the end of his letters,
he sometimes has these just gold mines where he kind of just throws a bunch
of stuff in there.
And it’s some of my favorite of what he writes.
And I would argue that we have kind of a passage like that today.
So let me read a few verses and then we can talk about it.
“But as for you,
man of God, shun all of this.
Pursue righteousness,
godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness.
Fight the good fight of the faith.
Take hold of eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession
in the presence of many witnesses.
In the presence of God,
who gives life to all things,
and of Jesus Christ,
who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,
I charge you.
Keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
which he will bring about at the right time.
He who is the blessed and the sovereign,
the King of kings and Lord of lords,
it is he alone who has immortality and dwells in the unapproachable light
whom no one has ever
seen or can see.
To him,
the honor and eternal dominion.
Amen.”
If you’ve been with us in a Pauline letter before,
you know that we’ve said this.
We’ve even said it in this book.
Paul has these moments where in the midst of his writing,
he almost kind of goes into worship language.
He always sticks an amen in there,
so they’re fairly easy to spot,
but they’re kind of doxologies or adoration moments.
And he gets one here,
oddly enough though, he gets there starting from personal advice.
Most often, Paul just goes directly into those kind of things.
Here,
he gets there by way of a word to Timothy,
“As for you, man of God,” and he contrasts
all of the stuff we’ve been looking at the last few days,
the last few studies.
Don’t greed and discontent and
quarreling and all that kind of…
As for you, man of God,
shun all of that and pursue,
the word pursue means literally to chase after,
righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance,
and gentleness.
Almost fight the good fight of the faith and take hold of eternal life.
This is a wonderful charge to Timothy,
a charge beyond Timothy,
but Michael, I just really…
When Paul does this kind of stuff in his letters,
I find that there’s always something there
for me to receive,
and I think that he always gives us something to kind of chew on.
I think that these words are very meditational and that we can easily access in all of these scattered thoughts,
though they’re connected, but we can find something that’s for us.
I think maybe what becomes a little bit of a challenge for some of us is as we go through these,
we sort of pick up steam and we sort of just start getting carried away by the words and
we start missing some of the depth of what’s here.
I think that there’s a lot of depth here,
and I think that we do need to be mindful of the context.
You mentioned it, Clint, but I just want to go back and to make very clear here.
Remember,
just yesterday we were looking
here at this text.
We were looking at the idea of contentment.
Paul was making this argument that
the love of money is the root of all evil.
This idea that riches themselves can be a temptation.
They can pull us away towards these kinds of senseless and harmful desires.
This is what we’re looking at yesterday.
Today, now we build this bridge to what it looks like to be righteous,
and you see the list.
Godliness,
faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.
This is a beautiful
exposition of the Christian life.
When you are looking for a believer,
these are the aspects of
character that you will find,
but if we look closer and we literally just go to the next words,
fight the good fight of faith.
Here, all of this is combined into the same thing.
What does fighting the fight look like?
It looks like godliness.
It looks like faith.
It looks like love and endurance.
Clint, this is where I think Paul’s words actually maybe get us into trouble,
is because people like to go to verse 12 and say,
“I’m fighting the good fight.” Fight the fight.
Yes, in some sense, that feels good and it’s inspiring.
Maybe it encourages us to take up
our faith in a new way, but Clint,
we have to read verse 11 to understand verse 12.
Fighting the good fight doesn’t look like us looking for people to dress down.
It doesn’t look like the church seeking to make enemies in the world.
It looks like the church seeking to
be faithful, and faithfulness looks like
shunning these other things,
the love of money and riches and pursuing righteousness,
godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.
Anyone who’s tried to take those things knows it is indeed a fight,
but not the kind of fight that I think
we sometimes fill in.
Paul’s helpful in that,
but it can be a temptation to pick a thing out that
you want and stick with that and not the rest.
Yeah, that’s really good, Michael.
I would say exactly the same thing.
I think I would only maybe look at it in terms of the letter.
For Paul,
I think we’re tempted to read that and think that the fight is external.
It’s with someone.
And I think as he introduces it,
as for you, Timothy, man of God,
shun these things and chase these things,
push these things away and chase after these things.
So I think when we understand
that exactly as you’re saying, Michael,
we see that the fight,
the struggle Paul has in mind is internal.
It is discipleship.
Our enemies are more often inside of us than outside of us.
The things that keep us from faith,
the things that keep us from being faithful,
most often live in
us.
They’re not the result of other people.
Yes, other people can be frustrating.
Yes, other people have a role to play,
of course.
But the reality is that’s something we have to do internally,
take a hold of that eternal life for which you were called.
Grasp for it.
And this
really interesting language here,
chase,
fight, or struggle,
and grasp,
take hold of, reach for.
You know, that idea that we’re always trying to go just a little bit further,
a little bit deeper,
that we’re constantly, as people who follow Christ,
being called to those next steps,
which,
if we are being faithful,
also lead us away from the things that hinder us,
the things that Paul
has been warning Timothy about.
And this is a great term because these are the kind of words,
you know, it sounds like he’s saying them to Timothy,
but each and every one of us could write
this on our mirror,
on our refrigerator,
on our steering wheel, where, you know,
there would be, there is something here for every person.
I need to be really careful with words here,
so hear me out,
okay?
But I do think there’s a sense here in which we are challenged to look
beyond some of the constructs of faith,
of Christianity, to the lived reality of being
a follower of Jesus Christ.
And let me explain what I mean by that.
You know this, this, this connection that Paul makes between the good confession and the verse 12,
the good confession that Timothy made in the presence of many witnesses,
then look in verse 13,
Jesus Christ,
who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate,
Jesus made a good confession.
You notice how Paul connects these two things,
Timothy’s confession with Jesus’s confession.
That is so thoroughly fundamentally
foundationally Christian that because Jesus confessed the truth of who he was,
we therefore confess with our words and lives who Jesus is.
These two things are always paired.
What I love about that connection that Paul’s making is that the Christian’s always looking to Jesus as the one
who does.
You know Jesus makes things right in the world,
so therefore Christians make things
right in the world.
Jesus was righteous, so when we want to know what righteousness looks like,
we look to Jesus.
Jesus fought the good fight of faith.
He did that hanging on the cross
as he was subject to the powers of the world.
That is a world transforming understanding of
what it means to follow the Savior,
and that’s exactly what Paul is doing as he comes to
conclusion.
As he’s making the case,
all of these words offered about,
and some of them quite challenging,
right?
Clint, I mean we’re gonna be honest,
words about the conduct of the home,
Christian leadership,
what you do with those who oppose the teaching of the gospel.
You know, some of this was really tough,
rubber meets the road kind of stuff that we even struggled with in interpretation,
but now we get here and we’re reminded,
live as Jesus lived.
As he confessed, we are called to confess him.
That is the core of our faith,
and that is, I think, a beautiful place to see some of these themes now being summarized at the end of the letter.
Right, and to your original point,
Michael, how did Jesus make confession to Pontius Pilate?
He didn’t attack Pilate.
He didn’t argue with Pilate.
He didn’t fight with Pilate.
He simply stood as
himself and said, “I am.
Are you the Messiah?
I am.” And then he allowed himself to go to the cross
out of love and grace for other people.
And so,
I think that’s a good counsel and wise interpretation,
that we have to be very careful when we read words like fight,
that we don’t misunderstand
or misinterpret what they mean,
because for Paul, at least in this context,
and Paul’s not above
fighting with people.
Don’t get me wrong.
Paul will dress down people,
and he’s done it in this
letter.
But as he calls Timothy to leadership,
he calls him not to conflict,
not to contentious relationship with people, but to godliness and faith and love,
endurance,
which is sort of like patience and gentleness.
And these are the things that he understands comprise the fight to be faithful,
not people who disagree with us,
not non-Christians, not those who drive us crazy.
They present their own challenges,
but that grabbing hold of the faith is something we do
in our own lives,
in our own heart,
and then we move forward in the—again,
we have this wonderful
language, the presence of God,
the manifestation of the Lord,
which He will bring about the sovereign
King of kings, Lord of lords.
He alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light.
We always look beyond ourself to that one,
the one here that He just piles affirmation upon affirmation towards,
praise upon praise.
It is that one from whom we take our cues, and to Him,
and Him alone,
be honor and eternal dominion.
And then, Paul, you could kind of—the best way to
read this, I think, is to imagine Paul getting louder and stronger until he finally just,
you know, says, “Amen!” And that’s where it leads you.
Well, it does make you wonder,
doesn’t it?
A little bit about the context that Paul’s writing to here,
especially as you see now
the care that’s been taken to begin to bring some of these themes to conclusion.
You know, you’ve got an orator making their point,
and here as we come to make the point, we’re told
that Jesus alone has immortality,
that He dwells in unapproachable light.
It makes you wonder,
was some of the opponent’s teaching that they have the light,
that they stand in the light,
that they can contain the light.
Friends,
man, that’s contemporary.
I mean, that lives in our
hearts today.
The Church continues to seek to point out where that happens,
and that happens in all of us,
where we become firmly convinced that we have some very tight-fisted hold on the truth,
the gospel.
And the moment we’ve done that,
we essentially discover that it is nothing
but air, because Jesus Christ can’t be held.
The unsearchable light cannot be held in the palm of our hand.
So it does make you wonder,
is there some debate within the Church that a person or
some people have the teaching,
they have the revelation,
they have the riches,
and that they are trying to bring other people along on that journey?
And Paul wants to make it very clear
no,
only one person has the light.
Only one person lives in immortality,
and that person is the one
in whom we should be content,
that that should be enough for us.
If that’s the case,
if there is some of that in the text,
and of course that’s pure speculation,
then I think it’s fair to say
that the message to us today remains very much the same,
that instead of looking for answers
to things that may not have answers,
the call to being Christian may be faith and contentment.
It may be the willingness to trust,
and living in that trust,
and seeing that as we trust Jesus
more and more every day,
that some of the answers that we were seeking to grasp and hold may come to us.
That, you know, as Jesus said,
that we are called to lead to the extent that we’re called to
serve, that we must serve.
And there’s a kind of inversion to the Kingdom,
and I think we see a
version of that here,
even at the end of Timothy.
Yeah, I don’t think there’s a lot of speculation
in that, Michael.
I mean, look at the language.
He’s the only sovereign.
He alone has immortality.
I mean, Paul,
in everything Paul writes,
I think we see on display his conviction
of the uniqueness and the oneness of Christ.
I mean, I think that’s written here pretty clearly.
Yeah, so very good.
Really good words today.
Keep the commandment without spot or blame.
Keep on grasping,
striving,
struggling,
grab hold of eternal life,
live out of that,
live up to that, live into that.
Really good devotional stuff today.
You know,
Paul has just a masterful way of dropping those in,
sometimes where you don’t expect them,
often near the end of chapters or end of letters.
Interestingly enough,
then it’s almost tomorrow.
It’s almost like he remembered one other thing he was going to say,
because you would expect maybe we’d end on this high point,
but instead there’s a little
bit of instruction left for Timothy.
So, I hope you can join us tomorrow as we’ll close out the
letter and look at how Paul finishes.
I don’t know about you,
Clint.
I’m sure this has never
happened to you, but I have gotten to the end of a sermon and thought,
“Oh, I forgot to say that.”
Oh, yeah.
Let me slide that in.
Yeah, usually about a day later.
All right, friends.
Thanks for being with us.
We’ll see you tomorrow.