Thessalonians – Philemon

Hi, welcome back to The Pastor Podcast.
Good to have you listening.
We appreciate you joining us for a kind of a busy day.
Several books lined up as we get to the shorter letters
that Paul has written.
We have a lot to cover today as we move through the last of Paul’s
communal letters written to churches.
And then we start examining some of the letters that Paul
wrote to particular individuals.
And I think some good stuff,
we will kind of move through
it quickly, try to hit the highlights for you and do some summary today.
Yeah, absolutely.
It is a strength of the way that we’re doing the reading this week that you
get an opportunity to really just sort of drop into different Christian communities.
And you’re going to hear in the midst of our conversation,
different concerns being addressed in each case
and how Paul is working with a group of other pastoral leaders to try to address those things.
So the strength of this is the fact that we move pretty quickly and you’re going to get a broad
spectrum of what is happening in the early church.
Of course, the downside to that is there’s a lot
of meat here and a lot of time has been spent studying some of the specific concerns of these places.
So if you find a community here that really piques your interest,
if you have time this week
to dig in and study a little bit,
that’s a great time to do it.
Or maybe just put a bookmark in
your Bible and come back to it when we get to the end of the 90-day project.
But we start here with
first Thessalonians and let’s talk a little bit about the community there and what we find as we open it up.
First and second Thessalonians are interesting books.
A couple reasons I think,
Michael, they seem less conflicted.
The church in Thessalonica seems to be doing okay.
And I think seems to ask some questions that have a little bit of nuance,
maybe a little more
theological sophistication than we’ve seen in some of the other letters.
Part of that could be that
Paul’s not so busy scolding them.
Also interesting in first Thessalonians that you’ll notice that
Paul writes almost exclusively in third person.
Everything is we said this and we did this.
You have to read between the lines a little bit from this church.
But it seems like they’re asking some questions about death,
about the return of Jesus,
about resurrection,
some kind of I would maybe
even say second level or second tier questions about what the faith means,
not just in how we
live, but in what happens when we’re done living.
And Paul spends some time with them on those topics.
Absolutely. And you see early in first Thessalonians Paul talking a lot about his
relationship to the community in Thessalonica.
He’s talking about both the time he’s been with them,
the stuff that he spoke to them about,
even some of the leadership connections that he has with
Timothy and others.
So in the beginning of that book,
you have a very sort of relational section
and then he pivots.
I think it’s fair to say he starts pivoting here in chapter four.
As for other matters,
brothers and sisters, we instructed you how to live in order to please God.
And he goes on,
you know, we urge you and the Lord to do this and more.
And he gives instructions
about what one’s relationships with others should look like.
And then later in that chapter,
he’s going to actually begin talking about exactly what you mentioned,
clit, some of those concerns about
death and what happens to the Christian community beyond this life,
which, which I think it’s fair
to say that that’s a little bit beyond what food should I eat tonight.
Some of that is what are
the implications of those who have been faithful and have now gone on?
What is that going to mean
for them in resurrection?
Paul, we need to understand resurrection in a greater sense,
because our lived experience is having us ask questions that in their case are great questions.
Yeah.
And you have this metaphorical language of the gospel that Jesus frees us from death,
and yet you have a community in which people are physically dying and it raises those questions.
Michael, one of my favorite funeral verses is actually in this book at the middle of chapter
four.
Paul says, I don’t want you to be uninformed about those who have died.
And then he says this,
so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
And I’ve always heard in that two things.
First, that it gives us permission to grieve.
The idea that because we know the resurrection,
we can’t be sad when someone dies is ludicrous.
We, of course, grieve that which we love when we lose it.
And yet, Paul adds this line so that we don’t grieve as those who have no hope.
And it seems to me that of all places in the funeral,
we try to put those two things
both on display.
The grief of loss,
which is real and painful,
and the hope of the gospel,
which is real and promising.
And it’s not always easy to keep those things together,
to keep those things connected.
And so listening to Paul try to help this congregation address some
of those questions I think is helpful.
Clint, I’ve always been convicted that one of the
distinctives of the Christian family is that we show up at the occasion of death and we proclaim life.
We stand in the face of darkness and we speak light.
We see in Christ a gateway,
an opportunity,
a proclamation that would not exist without him.
And I think what we might miss
in that idea of what do we do with those who have gone on?
What does the funeral represent?
We sometimes miss how important that moment is for the living.
The actual structure of our service,
even here at First Press,
leads from that proclamation of the gospel,
the reminder of the good news,
very quickly to prayers that remind the people sitting in the pews,
you’re called the service.
That it’s almost a reminding to each of us that while we live on
this side of eternity,
we’re called as witnesses.
We have a job that we’re here.
And Paul even says
that.
He says, you know,
this community should not live in the darkness so that the darkness
doesn’t surprise.
That your children of the light and your children of the day,
we don’t belong to the darkness.
So let’s not be like others who are asleep,
but let us be awake and sober.
I think that’s well said, Michael.
You know, Paul moves through this section on death
and on grief and on the promise of resurrection.
But then he moves back to the way that we live
and he ends the letter with just some very good and very standard Paul things to say,
be at peace among yourselves,
encourage the faint hearted,
help the weak, be patient with everyone,
see that you don’t repay evil for evil,
rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.
It is, I think, not a stretch to say for Paul,
because we know death isn’t the end of the story,
it changes how we live before we die.
And I think you get a pretty good picture of that in this letter.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think maybe a little context which will inform first Thessalonians,
but bridges into second Thessalonians is I think you have to be aware when you pick up these
letters that the community who is engaging with Paul here seems to have church members who have died.
And we don’t know the exact nature of that,
whether that was of natural causes or whether there’s persecution.
Paul certainly talks about his own suffering early in first Thessalonians.
But regardless,
these believers have gone on.
So the question is,
what happens to these people?
And what happens to those who have gone on before?
Because this community had taken seriously,
Jesus claim that he would return any day that they were expecting today’s the day,
come Lord Jesus, come.
So when these beloved brothers and sisters,
these faithful people are dying,
it sort of creates a new problem, like, oh, wait,
we didn’t see that one coming,
we thought we were all going to get caught up in the air,
we thought it was going to happen today, it didn’t happen.
So now there’s this flushing out of what do we do with this new and unexpected thing, theologically,
and I kind of point that back to it’s a similar kind of turn that you
have in the church’s understanding of Jesus,
because no one saw the Son of God being coming
incarnate in a human.
Nobody in that long history saw that coming.
And in a slightly similar way,
I don’t think anyone in the early church saw Jesus’s return coming as late as it has come,
that they assumed that that was come Lord Jesus now.
And so now they’re wrestling with figuring that out.
Yeah. And I think the implications of that do take us into second Thessalonians,
as Paul continues that theme,
and it may be that they have written him back with some specific
questions.
It may also be that one of the struggles is that they’re finding out in this early window
of the church that being Christian following Christ doesn’t always make life easier.
And so Paul writes back to them kind of at the intersection of those two themes,
I think, Michael, the idea of the end times of a judgment and of the persecution and the difficulty that is a prelude
to it, that he reminds the church they can’t expect an easy journey,
that they haven’t been
promised an easy journey,
that that’s not the way of Christ,
that’s not the promise we have in Christ,
that sometimes being faithful is hard and painful.
And sometimes it means persecution.
But again, then he circles around to almost it’s oversimplified,
but control what you can control,
be faithful in your circumstances,
be faithful to one another, don’t be idle,
don’t be gossips, live the right way in community so that you can stand.
And I think he uses that word a couple
times here, stand up to the persecution that may be happening.
It’s funny you say that,
turn to that idea of the busy bodies and the idle and disruptive people.
Because I think that’s a
really interesting example here of the problem that Paul is addressing.
Because simultaneously, Paul is saying to this community in Thessalonica, he’s saying,
Jesus is coming, that is a reality,
and you need to be prepared.
And then he’s saying to all of the people who heard that and thought
to themselves, great, I’m quitting my job,
I’m going to sit on my couch,
and I’m going to just
party until it comes.
He’s going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa,
no, no, no, that’s not the right
response.
The right response to Jesus’s imminent return is not to go into idleness,
it’s the exact opposite.
It’s to be fashioned into a living and active community.
And so all of this ethical stuff
about how you live in relationship with other people is in many ways an antidote to what I
think some people heard in that,
which was freedom to laziness,
freedom to giving up,
freedom to just withdrawing from life completely and saying,
my real life is on the other side of eternity,
and so I don’t need to live this life.
And Paul’s understanding of this is the opposite of that,
that because of eternity,
we need to live today.
And that seems to be a thing that he’s trying to
get across to this community.
Yeah, there’s a verse near the end of the book in which Paul says,
do your work quietly and earn your own living.
And then he follows that up with these words,
brothers and sisters, do not become weary in doing what is right.
And I think that’s wonderful encouragement.
Do what is right.
And if anybody who has tried seriously to be faithful to Jesus
knows, it can be exhausting.
Loving people who are hard to love,
forgiving people who have hurt you,
taking genuine interest outside of yourself,
trying to bless and not curse,
all of those various instructions that we read throughout the New Testament,
that is hard work.
There’s nothing easy about that.
And so, this simple phrase, do not be weary.
Don’t get tired.
Don’t give up in
doing what is right.
You know, personally, I could read that every day.
In fact, I actually have it
written on my bulletin board.
Now, we’ve got to say here, Clint,
Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2,
and the man of lawlessness language here,
has given ammunition to every generation of the church.
In every generation of the Christian church,
someone has been called the man of lawlessness.
Someone has found a person to name in this spot.
And there’s been a lot of ink spilled over who
Paul is referencing and what this means.
I think I only bring this up to say,
and I’d be interested
in you filling this out,
Clint.
But just quickly,
the church has always had individuals vying for
its attention, injecting partial truths into its life.
And this isn’t the only letter where Paul
is calling out.
In other letters, he names people and says that do not listen to them.
But the church has in every generation had speakers and leaders who have told the church
things that have had influence but have not been helpful.
And it seems here that Paul’s addressing
that.
Would you say that’s fair?
I think that’s fair,
Michael.
Paul here hits a biblical theme
that we see, to some extent, we see in the Gospels probably Luke and John the most,
perhaps, maybe a little bit of Matthew.
We’re going to see this in buckets in the book of Revelation,
and we’ll have a chance to dig deep in some of these ideas.
But Paul here echoes the idea
that for Christians on planet earth,
when the day comes,
it’s going to get worse before it
gets better.
The idea of sort of moving our way up better and better till we finally get to utopia
is not a very New Testament idea.
Paul here echoes what all of the books who talk about it seem to
say, that there are forces that oppose the Gospel,
and when they are unleashed,
it will be rough.
To some extent, we’re always living in that tension.
To some extent, we’re always, I think,
experiencing that opposition.
There is something in us and in the world that is opposed to what
God wants to do,
and we experience it personally,
we experience it socially,
we experience it communally.
And so, I think it’s important that Paul doesn’t name names,
but he does say,
“Don’t be surprised when these things happen,” that they’re part of the process.
Well, and by the way,
with the benefit of a little historical looking back,
the truth is it got way worse before it got better for the church,
right?
I mean, as the church grew, as communities grew,
as the overall tenor of the Gospel became louder,
persecution,
martyrdom,
significant social pressure literally around the world would come with it historically.
So Paul’s right, it got significantly worse for these people as the Gospel continued to grow and to thrive.
And you point to places even today where the Gospel is of great cost to those who
those are some of the incubators of faith, even today.
In some of those places,
the Gospel is growing in rapid numbers.
And I do think there’s something instructive in the fact
that this is intrinsic to the Gospel,
and maybe as those who enjoy freedom and security that is
almost unheard of historically as it relates to our faith,
we might miss some of that tone and
tenor of what Paul’s saying here.
Yeah,
it’s instructive that historically speaking,
the church has often shown the most growth when it’s faced the most opposition.
The pressure from the world has often deepened the church and steeled its resolve rather than broken it down.
And I think, Clint,
that resolve to really be connected and that resolve to live together is messy and complicated.
And I don’t know if this is the right time,
but I do feel like that does
provide a little bit of a bridge to what we find in the Letters to Timothy because here
we encounter a community that is running full speed with all of the complexities of life.
The next few letters,
the Letters to Timothy and Titus,
I think are interesting because Paul,
rather than addressing congregations,
he’s addressing individuals who at some level have
leadership in those congregations.
And he’s talking pastor to pastor here or as a mentor,
maybe as a father figure to these younger men who are themselves trying to help communities
live into the Gospel.
And the instructions that Paul gives them are insightful,
interesting,
maybe a little confusing in a couple of places.
But I think they are kind of a fascinating look
at what Paul thinks matters most and how Paul tries to help others implement that in their
places, in their congregations.
I wonder if it’s fair that you probably receive from these next
couple of letters a little bit of what you bring to them.
And I mean that in the largest sense,
your even age and life experience,
whether you identify with Paul,
the giver of the wisdom,
or if you identify with Timothy,
the receiver of it,
or paint upon how you think of Scripture.
And when you come to Scripture,
what you’re looking for will change the tone and tenor of
this letter because there are sections throughout these letters where Paul is just nuts and bolts
nailing down specific instructions.
This thing, this thing, do this thing, don’t do this thing,
encourage people to do this thing,
go do this thing.
And some of those things are going to
feel like they’re immediately applicable,
if that’s what you’re looking for.
And then others, you’re going to come to and you’re going to say,
“I don’t know how I would apply that.” And that
leaves me a little confused,
to use your word.
Yeah, fascinating span here, I think, Michael.
Paul’s going to tell Timothy,
“Here’s what you have to insist on for leaders in the church.
Here’s what you have to look out for.
Theologically,
here are some issues that you have to navigate.”
And then he’s going to tell him,
“And by the way,
if your stomach’s still bothering you,
drink some wine.
You’ll take care of yourself.” Really interesting relational letter from an
older pastor to a younger pastor.
And obviously, I’m a lot further down the road of older pastor,
so I tend to read this letter interested in what Paul had to say and the way he conveyed it.
As a younger pastor, I read it more as instructions to me personally.
And I think it does change.
My experience is maybe it changes a little over time.
I can possibly resonate with things that
Paul says now that I couldn’t have a couple decades ago.
You know, as you read this,
there are sections in which the stuff that Paul says is just unbelievably practical.
I look to specifically some of the instructions about leadership.
I’ll be honest, the church has,
historically, so this isn’t just a 20th or 21st century thing,
the church has struggled
to make sense of what to do with our leaders.
And humans are human,
humans are fallible, humans make mistakes.
We’ve always had leaders who have made poor decisions or have lived down
a long road that brought them to a place where they didn’t want to be.
Some of this is just
really very practical kind of instruction that,
number one, Christians should take our leaders
and the selection of leaders and the encouragement of leaders very seriously.
And there are some things that we should demand that it’s not just what you say on Sunday,
but it’s also the life that you live Monday through Saturday with your family and your community.
The leadership is a reflection of character and that we shouldn’t get that out of order.
I mean, all of that is in here and I think that’s incredibly helpful.
Again, I would say there’s deep wisdom shown in Paul’s words that the men in this case,
but I would add men and women who are involved in a congregation at the leadership level really do
set the path for that congregation, for that church.
That leadership is vitally important,
not only in the ability to do it,
but in the character of those who are doing it and that
they should be examples of what we are all aspiring to.
And that’s a very Presbyterian idea.
It’s not like it belongs to us.
All churches say we should have good leaders,
but Presbyterians have taken that language really seriously and we’ve tried to diligently and with integrity find leaders.
We go outside the bounds of the letter here because we have included men and women,
but who is involved in leadership is incredibly important to the life of the congregation and to
the direction it goes, I think.
And I think a thing that might maybe surprise you,
maybe it doesn’t surprise you at all,
is to know how much of the work of the church is simply on the ground, logistics making.
Paul and Timothy didn’t have emails,
but I imagine they would have been firing
off emails all day long.
Sometimes you just need decisions to be made about stuff.
And here he’s talking about stuff as concrete as what do you do with younger widows versus older widows?
What list do you put them on?
What qualifications to get on the list?
And what should your expectations
be if they don’t make the list?
And some of the stuff,
to be quite honest,
you read and you start
thinking, if you come to this text thinking,
how do I apply this today in my life?
The direct application of putting widows on lists is probably not going to be something you’re going to address,
but I think it speaks to a higher or larger reality that is as you serve in a congregation,
some of those concrete things that do live as a representation and outgrowth of what we believe the gospel is.
And it is sometimes nitty gritty like do this,
don’t do this, and just trying to
make the best decision with the best information you have.
Yeah, I have to tell you,
I read this letter and my impression is just Paul knows the church.
I feel like Paul has lived in the
congregations that I have been in and he’s seen the ins and outs and he gets it.
So he says things to Timothy,
don’t let anyone look down on you because you’re young,
because anyone who’s tried
to pastor at a young age knows that they’re often dismissed.
And so what’s the answer to that?
Set an example for believers in your speech,
in your conduct, in your love, in your faith, and in your purity, because ultimately those are the things that carry people’s opinions.
He says, pay close attention to yourself and your teaching.
Do not speak harshly to an older man,
speak to him as
a father, just these very real world practicalities.
And then the more serious,
rebuke those who persist in sin and do not ordain anyone hastily and do not participate in the sins of others, keep yourselves pure.
Anybody in church knows that when people get sideways,
how easy it can be to
form teams and to let that conflict fester.
And so these simple words don’t participate in the
sins of others are immensely meaningful,
I think, within the context of the church.
And then I’ve always loved this verse at the end of chapter 5,
Michael, the sins of some people are conspicuous and precede them to judgment while the sins of
others follow them there.
It may be reading too much into a single verse,
but what I hear Paul
saying in that to a young pastor is,
remember that everyone is broken.
Remember that everyone has struggles.
They may be obvious.
And if so,
love them through them.
They may be hidden.
And if so, love them with the awareness that they’re there.
I think Paul shows incredible insight into what
it takes to live in community as a leader here.
I’d love to know how Timothy did.
I wish we had a record of,
did he make it?
Did he hang in there?
Was the church good to him?
Certainly, it’s good to have Paul in your corner.
Maybe.
Maybe it’s good to have Paul in your corner.
Sometimes I think Paul brings some conflict too.
Maybe so.
And you know, that is reflected here in
the second letter with Timothy,
wouldn’t you say?
Because a thing you see Paul do in every letter to
every community he’s writing to,
at some point he’s counteracting someone else.
I mean, Paul’s saying something about false teachers is now normal as we read through the New Testament.
That’s just a normal part of what he addresses to each one of these church communities.
And so here it’s not surprising.
We see a rather extensive section where he’s talking to Timothy about that
very thing.
What do you do about people who come to church with false teachings?
And how do we
address that?
And in some ways,
I do think the church has always been tempted to not address those things,
to not call out false belief.
Because quite frankly, it’s nicer when we can
just all sort of let peace be and just move on without any conflict.
But there’s some conflict
in church that is not only necessary,
but it is absolutely helpful to the life of the community.
Almost like that forest fire that makes population possible for the next group of trees.
To some extent, doing the difficult work of pruning and trying to remain faithful theologically, that stuff matters.
Yeah, there are things I think for Paul that are non-negotiable,
things that can’t be tolerated,
conflict that separates,
that divides.
He says here, “Stupid and senseless quarrels.” I think Paul recognizes the tendency of the church.
And if we’re honest,
we have to put
ourselves in it.
In the early part of chapter 4,
he says, “You know, the time is coming when people
won’t put up with sound doctrine.
Having itching ears, they accumulate for themselves teachers to
suit their own desires.” In an age in culture,
Michael, where there’s a church on every other
corner, and there’s internet church and TV church and contemporary church and traditional
church.
And we have the latest greatest things in front of us all the time,
the newest pastor, the newest song, the newest this, the newest that.
I think those are words we need to be aware of.
We need to be conscious of this tendency that Paul describes to go to the place that scratches
our itches and instead subject ourselves and submit ourselves to sound doctrine.
That seems to me a very modern verse.
In Paul’s day, they don’t have the kind of church scene that we have,
but it’s interesting that even then already they’re seeing implications of it.
I think that’s important though, Clint.
And it’s worth pausing for a second there to say,
I probably heard this verse more than any person should ever hear this particular verse just because
of my own life story.
And you know what’s fascinating to me?
I don’t remember a single
time where someone quoted this verse where they included themselves as the one with the itching
ears.
Absolutely.
It’s interesting how the itching ears are always everyone who conveniently
thinks differently than you on that particular theological topic.
Isn’t listening to your sound doctrine.
Absolutely.
And I think what is absolutely true is itching ears is a human nature problem,
right?
And that fundamentally we are all looking for teachers that affirm
the worldview that we bring to the gospel.
And that is not so much something to be decried as
much as it is to be recognized because the moment that we can recognize that we are human,
therefore we are what we are,
our experiences and our spirit.
And we are what God made us to be along with all
the choices we made and choices we’ve not made,
that that whole thing,
that when we bring that to
God and when we are tempted to turn the side to all these other things,
fundamentally the core gospel through all of these letters,
and I’m including now the Corinthians and even Romans and
Ephesians, Colossians, all of these letters,
the core gospel is you have to live in community,
you have to figure it out.
And that’s like you’ve already said, Clint,
to some extent, drudge work at some moments,
but the gospel looks like us living in spite of those temptations to
division, to find unity, to practice grace, to live with conviction in our lives together.
And that core gospel, which he’s compelling Timothy to is by the way,
the core gospel we’re trying to keep
at the center of our life here today.
Yeah.
And I’m sure in what is an unintentional irony,
we see how incredibly difficult that is because Paul has essentially said in one way or another through these letters,
hang in there with each other, work it out,
figure it out, let the gospel transform your relationships as husbands and wives,
as slaves and masters,
as parents and children.
And then we get to the end of this letter.
Verse 9, “Do your best to come see me soon,
for Demas in love with the present world has deserted me,
and Cressons has gone to Galatia.
Only Luke is with me.” And then he continues,
“Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm.
Be aware of him.
He strongly opposed our message.” Even Paul,
the one who perhaps unknowingly is
writing the scriptures in these letters,
is himself participant in broken relationships,
rightly or wrongly in places where he’s had to draw lines and say,
“We can’t work together.
I can’t accept that or I can’t condone that.” It is a testament,
I think, to how well Paul
understands the struggle that he ends the letter referencing that very thing happening in his personal experience.
It’s worth noting at the end of this letter too,
he does that with some sense
of finality in mind.
He’s ending this letter in verse 7 of chapter 4,
“I fought the good fight.
I finished the race.
I’ve kept the faith.
Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness,
which is Christ Jesus.” It would be good for all of us to remember that here Paul is really
reflecting from that perspective of the end of a career,
the end of a race well-run, and he says,
you know, “Here’s some things that I’ve learned that I want to pass down to you.” And it’s worth
mentioning here, I think Clint and I talked about this before the conversation earlier in the week
when I came in the office and said, “Oh,
there’s some hard stuff in these letters.” And as we
talked about our differences in reading the text and what’s there,
I do wonder if that difference
in age has something to do with the span of time that one’s seen,
right?
Think of all of the debates
that Paul’s had, all of the people that he’s gotten crossways with,
all of the church conflicts that
he’s helped congregations work through.
And for him,
he’s found a way in his own leadership and
in his own personal faith to be sustained and nurtured and to be wise and careful in the midst
of that.
To a young person,
this is just like getting dropped on,
“Wait, I have to worry about
that?
And how am I going to do that?
And I don’t want to get that person mad.
And now what?
I have to…” I do think there’s a kind of wise patience and confidence in faith that is inscribed in this
that maybe does come from a different vantage than what the young person would bring to it.
I think that has to be true.
I mean, the longer we’ve lived,
the more opportunity we’ve had to
reflect on our mistakes,
to perhaps see the places that we got it wrong,
and then consequently try to
point those out to the people behind us,
hoping they miss those pitfalls that we fell into.
And I think you hear some of that in Paul.
I think it matters that Paul is an older man writing this
letter, the personal touches.
Timothy, when you come, bring the cloak that I left,
also the books, above all the parchments.
And then at the end,
there’s this very interesting line,
“Do your best to come before winter,” which is the comment of an older man,
right?
“Come and spend the winter with
me.
Don’t get stuck away.
I’m lonely.
I’m looking at the end of my journey.
I’m looking back on
these various things.” And to have a mentor,
to have someone that Paul wants to share that wisdom
and that relationship with,
I do think these books,
1 and 2 Timothy,
maybe Titus as well,
wonderful opportunities for both young believers and older believers to hear things that are in them.
I think that sets us up really well for these last two books,
Titus and Philemon.
And I think both of
these are short, but they contain within them some really interesting backstories.
So really quickly,
we turn our attention to really Paul’s conversations with these two different individuals.
So, the Book of Titus,
we’ve seen this in other places,
Michael.
We saw it in Corinthians.
We saw a lot of it just a few pages ago in Timothy.
But in Titus, maybe we have one of the clearest
indicators of Paul’s concern for how Christians appear to the world.
And Paul’s teaching that our
relationships and our families and our marriages and our work environments say something about
our faith, that Paul does not leave those things disconnected.
And so here,
again, speaking to a younger worker in the Gospel, a younger pastor,
lots of advice,
lots of instruction on make sure
people get these things right because the world is watching.
And when the world looks at the church,
it’s the church’s task to show it something qualitatively different in the way that we relate
to one another in all of our various relationships.
And if we can’t do that,
then we can’t blame the
world for not catching a glimpse of the Gospel.
That’s our fault.
That’s not the world’s fault.
I like that in this letter.
I think it comes out pretty clearly.
I agree.
And I think Titus is really interesting because once again,
this is another one of those
letters where little sound bites get ripped out in different arguments.
What’s fascinating about this is if you read this in one sitting,
as you will, what you’re going to see is this is all connected.
When Paul writes this letter,
it is intended, I think, to be a portrayal of the
entire breadth of Christian discipleship.
And instead of us breaking those pieces out and saying,
well, these people aren’t good at this or these people don’t emphasize this enough,
it’s really a mirror in which we can see ourselves and say,
yeah, I’ve got a lot of discipling to do.
There’s a lot of places where I need to grow.
And this letter really,
it does provide a short,
tract size kind of description of what we’re called to be as people. Yeah.
And I think it’s easy to read these letters millennia later and be critical of Paul
for not going far enough,
not advocating enough partnership in marriage,
not condemning slavery instead of telling slaves and masters to respect each other and honor one another.
And that’s valid.
I think to some extent we can say that Paul’s time perhaps doesn’t let him move far enough, perhaps.
I do think it matters though that Paul is moving the needle.
When Paul says,
“Wives obey your husbands,” that sounds offensive.
But he turns then and says,
“Husbands, love your wives like Christ loved the church.” Well,
that erases all the concern.
That erases any fear that a man would abuse some kind of authority as a husband.
And I know most
of us don’t think in those terms,
but we have to at least give Paul the credit for taking a step in
what we would consider the right direction.
And as I read these words in Titus,
again, I’m struck by how much it matters to Paul that our faith transforms all of our relationships,
that our faith matters and how it plays itself out in people we work with and live with and interact
with at church and outside of church.
And I think for Paul it in some ways is that simple,
which isn’t simple at all,
but at the heart of it is Jesus Christ has to change things in us.
Maybe this is fair.
Philemon provides an interesting glimpse into a way in which that
happens because one of those relationships you talked about,
Clint, was the master-slave relationship.
And here we have a letter being delivered right into the middle of that.
It appears to give you a little backstory that we have here a slave being returned to his master,
who’s probably carrying this letter from Paul.
And we hear in it a pretty interesting request
that whatever account that this slave might have with his master,
whatever issues may be there,
insinuating there are issues,
that Paul should be the one to get the blame for that and not the slave.
Yeah, we get the idea that there’s this slave Onesimus.
He is run away from Philemon.
Somehow he ended up with Paul and became a believer,
as Philemon is also a believer.
And Paul is writing, sending the slave back,
essentially saying, “I’m not telling you what to do,
but you know what you should do.
I’m not telling you don’t punish him,
but don’t punish him.
I’m not telling you let him go and let him come back to me.
But if you want to do that,
that’d be the least you could do given what I’ve done for you.” And I’ve joked sometimes about
playing the pastor card,
you know, if I get pulled over for speeding or something,
pastors will try to mention that they’re pastors.
Well, I think Paul here is definitely playing the pastor card.
He’s saying not so subtly to Philemon,
“Look, you should probably do what I tell you,
but I’d rather not have to tell you,
but I’m going to make it clear so you know what I think you should do,
and then go ahead and do that.” It’s not very hard to see through his strategy here.
My favorite verse,
this entire book, “I,
Paul, am writing this with my own hand.
I will pay it back,
not to mention that you owe me your very self.” Which is amazing.
I mean, right?
Like, I will pay back everything that you owe,
even though you owe me everything that you have.
So just remember that when you’re asking for me to repay you.
Yeah.
Does Paul work in the angles a little bit, I think?
I will say that’s an interesting comment,
the pastor card.
I do think that you can see in this
letter, Paul does take what he says seriously.
He’s not a hypocrite.
When he says that social
relationships are changed by the gospel,
you can see images of that in here,
because really, Philemon has no legal reason to treat Onesimus differently because of his Christian faith.
And what Paul’s appealing to is to say that your faith does have implications on how you treat this slave.
And later, as the slave conversation happens in America,
this letter gets referenced as an
example of how despite Paul’s other statements about masters and slaves in the New Testament,
here he’s advocating for some form of freedom and doing that because of his conviction of the gospel.
And so here you really do see in a one page letter how the gospel has implications in social
relationships in real and concrete ways.
This isn’t just talk.
This is Paul saying this should
change something for Onesimus,
Philemon.
And I don’t want to tell you what it is, but you know.
Yeah.
And if we read Paul generously,
and I think we should,
I think we should give Paul
the benefit of the doubt,
I also think he sees this as an opportunity for Philemon to do the
right thing.
That Onesimus has broken at best a contract and at worst the law.
And Philemon is legally able to hold him accountable and to punish him essentially as harshly as he wants to.
The runaway slave has no rights,
and yet Paul sends him back,
trusting that Philemon, because of his faith,
will take a different approach.
And that’s probably a calculated risk
on Paul’s part, but it’s a great deal of trust.
I think that he shows Philemon.
And I think he sees
in this situation an opportunity for Philemon to do something because he’s a Christian in a way
that he wouldn’t if he wasn’t.
Yeah. There’s a sense in which what could be argued to be a political letter.
There’s also a real invitation to doing it better,
to modeling for the world
what this relationship can look like.
And I think both of those can be true at the same time.
I do think this is calculated,
and it also is wise.
It is Paul trying to push the church to be better,
and ultimately we seek to do the same work today.
Yeah.
And I think maybe it could be said,
Michael, as we finish Paul’s contributions to the New Testament,
that that is simply who he is,
that Paul doesn’t see anything except through the lens of Jesus.
Whether it’s women arguing with
each other in a church,
whether it’s a man getting sideways with the community or sexual impurity,
or whether it’s this situation with a slave reunited with a master,
everything Paul does, everything Paul sees, he sees through the lens of what does Christ compel us to do in this
situation?
What does Christ invite and ask of us in this particular moment?
And you have to be,
I think, moved by that.
You have to be impressed by that.
Paul is as thoroughly Jesus-centered
as a person can be.
And I don’t know how you read Paul’s letters without coming out on the other
side, seeing his conviction that faith has always lived out in community.
I mean, with all of the problems he addresses,
Clint,
I’m sure Paul wanted to say over and over again, just stop.
Just stop getting together.
Stop sharing all of these viruses of theology and practice.
Just stop.
And he never once says that.
He never once let someone off the hook.
In fact, when he tells the church in Corinth,
“Put this man out,” it’s for the sake of him being brought back in.
So I think you see in this not only his conviction that Jesus Christ is center,
but that language in the
body of Christ is real for Paul.
Jesus is the center,
and that’s why we’re connected.
And so in a culture that is tempted by individual faith,
individual Christianity,
you know, I’ll worship God in my own way,
in my own place,
this sort of blanket spirituality.
You can’t read, I don’t think, Paul’s letters without being convicted by that central connection to who Jesus Christ is.
He makes community.
One hundred percent, Michael.
And I think for Paul,
it seems clear that our first priority
is our relationship with Christ.
In other words, what should we do is primarily answered by Jesus,
but secondarily answered by our neighbor.
Does this affect my neighbor?
Does this harm my neighbor’s
faith?
Does this upset the weaker brother or sister?
Does this cause conflict?
Does this cause strife?
Does this make a problem linger?
So it’s fascinating that our primary allegiance in Paul
is always Jesus, but right behind it is not ourselves, but our community,
our brothers and sisters in the faith.
And Paul gets beat up through the years and, you know,
maybe rightly so.
He has his quirks.
But if you listen,
some incredible wisdom and a lot of discipleship to
be learned as you work your way through Paul’s letters.
I hope you’ve enjoyed them.
I hope you found them meaningful and moving.
And I hope you appreciate what you’ve seen in them as we
take the turn and move now into the rest of the New Testament,
which is not written by Paul.
And we hope that you’ve heard in these words something helpful as you encounter those texts.
We’re grateful to have you with us again on the Pastor Talk podcast.
We turn our attention to the next readings.
We seek to not only turn our attention to what we find,
but to be transformed
by what we’ve read.
Thank you, friends.
We look forward to seeing you next Saturday as we release the next episode.
Have a great one.