1 Tim 6:11 “But as for you O man of God. flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.”
These verses mark a dramatic shift in this letter; Paul is turning up the passion volume as he comes in for finish.
Think about Paul…a real man, writing a real letter, about real things, things of ultimate importance…to a younger man he has invested his life in and who cares deeply about.
He is not casually writing theological facts for a blog
I have written wedding sermons for my daughters, funeral sermons for my parents, my grandchildren…
In all of these…I have wept as I wrote…they are just words, typed on a keyboard…but they are different than other words I write…they are not just words.
They come from a different place in my heart and life.
All of Paul’s words to Timothy in this letter are the Word of God…but listen and try to hear the passion in these words.
Passion that comes through the man Paul…but they come from the heart of God as well.
Let me give you some things to listen for that indicate passion…
Flee, Pursue, Fight, Take hold, I charge you, O man of God…these are “man to man” kind of words.
Not that a woman doesn’t resonate with these words…they are just not the words that my wife would use to say the same things.
But Paul is a man and Timothy is a man…so he uses the words that work for the both of them.
“Man of God” is used only here in the NT…it was common in the OT.
Paul is setting the bar high…Timothy, you are like those men of old…you are a man of God.
And there is an interjection at the beginning of the sentence.
An interjection is a word used to express spontaneous emotions…”Wow”, “Yuck”, “Ouch”, “hoorah”…or if you are British “Crikey”
Here it is simply…”O”
It is left out of some translations, but it should not be…
Jim Lewis, when overcome with emotion will say, “Oh my!”
Paul writes, “But as for you, O…you man of God!”
Listen carefully for the passion in this:
11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. 12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, 14 to keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which he will display at the proper time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
We will focus on three things in the passage
1. God’s positive Ethic.
What he is against is always because of the better thing that he is for.
Flee that, pursue this
2. We must live our lives being all in for what God is all for.
Fight the good fight of the faith
3. To do this consistently we must train to focus on Christ not on our circumstances.
I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus.
First…
I. God’s positive Ethic.
What he is against is always because of the better thing that he is for.
Flee that, but pursue this
Run from that, BY running towards this.
Repentance is turning from sin to God…the word is “metanoia”…a change of mind, leading to a change of life direction.
We can think that to “repent” is simply to turn from sin…it is not, it is turning from sin to God.
We are turning from death to life, dark to light.
God is not a grumpy old man who complains about all that is wrong with the world.
He is not scanning about, trying to make sure no one is having any fun…so he can put a stop it immediately.
This is the image in the minds of many people and sadly it is the exact opposite of the truth.
I remember telling Crystal when she was very young, after having had to discipline her…”I want you to have a good and happy life…I want what is best for you…so I have to deal with what you are doing now, if rebellion if allowed to remain, it will make you so very unhappy.”
God is a generous father who wants good for his kids…what he is against is because of what he is for.
He is jealous for his own glory because we were made by him for him…when we chase idols we are destroyed by that pursuit.
When we pursue him we live in line with our design.
In the garden, there was an orchard of fruit trees…and life full of intimacy with God.
-Adam and Eve believed the enemy and took from the one single “no” among that vast orchard of “yes”
The OT laws were a gift to set his people apart…he said, “keep my covenant and you will be my treasured possession.”
Jesus said if we hold to his commands then we will know the truth, and then the truth will make us free.
No to sexual impurity…yes to joy, real pleasure, and freedom
No to anger and unforgiveness…yes to peace and freedom and sweet relationships.
No to selfishness and pride…yes to purpose, impact and freedom and real security in Christ.
Here Paul tells Timothy to “flee” from all the rotten, empty “no’s” that he has been outlining.
Then he tells him to actively “pursue” all that beautiful “yes” of life with God.
Run to this…and you will be running from that.
He gives six pursuits that serve as a representative list of these greater goods Timothy is to run towards.
Righteousness
Godliness
Faith
Love
Endurance
Gentleness
These themes are common in Paul’s writings…they are summary of a life well lived…he doesn’t need to unpack them here…because we can be sure that he had many conversations with Timothy about these things over the years.
1. Pursuit of righteousness is more inward…it is hunting the good stuff of the gospel, running towards gratitude for God’s gift of life in Christ Jesus.
2. The pursuit of godliness is the evidence that his gift of grace has taken root in our lives.
Righteousness is the root and godliness is the fruit of the gospel in our lives.
3. We pursue faith by training to trust God, especially when circumstances look bad, or difficult.
If you think…”I will trust God when it gets really hard…”
That’s not how it works.
You will trust God when it gets really hard to the same level that you are training to trust him today.
Jeremiah was complaining to God about his difficult life circumstances, and he challenged God for what seemed to be his unwillingness to take proper action against the wicked.
God’s response was a rebuke and a challenge in return:
“If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?” Jeremiah 12:5
“Step up O man of God…you think this is hard, it is about to get harder.”
“Train to trust me then by trusting me right now!”
Paul knew for a fact, this was going to be true for Timothy…it was going to get harder for him.
4. We are to pursue love…this is, Paul wrote, the goal of Timothy’s ministry, particularly his teaching…”the goal of our instruction is love.”
Seek to bless, never to impress.
5. The pursuit of steadfastness or endurance
Endurance was going to be necessary to stay there in Ephesus and to continue to pastor in the face of all the opposition.
*I think there were about 30 of us who received football scholarships at WSU my freshmen year.
There were seven us still in school four years later.
At least one was taken out early on by the proximately of a bar to the dorms.
Some by homesickness
Some by injury
Some by not going to class
There were other reasons…but the basic reason was simply how difficult it is for a young man to endure…
I thought about quitting…every single day my freshman year…no exaggeration, every day.
That’s not really a good way to think if you want to endure…but it is where my mind was at that time.
God’s grace and the love of my dad kept me from me quitting my freshman year.
Then the summer after my freshman year God took hold of my heart…I realized he had called me to WSU at that time…from then on, I never once thought of quitting.
Endurance was fueled by a sense of calling and purpose.
Paul will tie all these positive pursuits back to the time when Timothy made his own profession of faith…more on that shortly.
Endurance is hard…but endurance is necessary for every single good thing in our lives.
What we can miss as we are tempted to stop paying the ongoing cost of endurance is the cost of not enduring.
What would Carmen and Norma have missed…if they had not endured 70 years of marriage?
I see people who do not endure in the faith…because endurance is costly…and years later…I see the cost of them not having endured.
Endurance is a favorite word of Paul because it is a necessary thing for the follower of Christ.
6. The pursuit of gentleness
Paul has in mind the demeanor of the Lord Jesus here over the arrogant and aggressive false teachers…the knuckleheads that Timothy had to deal with.
Jesus was gentle in that he had controlled strength.
His meekness was not weakness…it was the settled choice to live for God’s glory not his own preferences.
All this is just a sampling of what God is for as opposed to the weak and empty things that he was against.
The Bible gives us God’s positive ethic…all that he is for.
What remains is for us to be all for it as well…
II. We must live our lives being fully for all that God is for.
Paul tells Timothy that he is to “Fight the good fight of the faith.”
The word translated “fight” is a Greek word that we get our English word, “agonize” from.
He does use the language of combat but it’s not about being combative but about being ready to give your all to be found faithful to the end.
Ultimately wars are won because warriors are willing to lose their lives to win them.
No war is won by soldiers who live self-protective lives.
Fighting the good fight is about having settled that you are going to give your life for the great cause of the gospel.
Being ready to give agonizing effort towards a goal worthy of our lives.
In his second letter to Timothy, as Paul writes near the end of his life he says:
“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
2 Tim 4:7
How could Paul say that he had finished, before he had died…was this arrogance, presumptuous?
Was he like one of the NFL running backs who spiked the ball before they crossed the goal line?
No, this was confidence in Christ that was the fruit of a long life of training to trust.
Listen to what he said elsewhere:
“I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death.” Phil 1:20
His confidence was not self-confidence…but he was fully confident that he would finish well, because he learned to trust the faithfulness of God.
Paul wrote “I have finished the race” to Timothy, just months before he died at the hand of Nero.
He is here, telling Timothy to do the same, to finish well.
To fight the good fight of the faith.
Take hold of eternal life to which you were called when you made the good profession.
That good confession was Timothy “confessing Jesus as his Lord.”
Keep training your mind to remember what you signed up for…remember what God has called you to.
“Timothy as you live out a very challenging life and ministry…remember God that has called you, God has saved you, God will keep you. ”
The only way to endure faithfully…to keep fighting the good fight all the way to the finish is to focus on Christ not our circumstances.
My life changed in a single summer when I decided that Jesus was Lord and I was going to live for him.
I went from self-pity, insecurity…and thinking of quitting every single day…because I was thinking mostly about myself… to asking God to use me for his purposes at my school and among my teammates.
It doesn’t sound all that dramatic to discuss it almost 50 years later…but everything changed for me when I started looking for God’s glory and the good of others and not just to my own interests.
Everything changed…I was not perfected; I am still not…but my life direction was set towards Christ.
It was perfection in overall direction…not in every action.
My focus changed from my circumstances to Christ…I struggle every day to keep my focus…but I do struggle, I do seek to fight the good fight of the faith.
Paul is driving Timothy that direction.
3. We must train to focus on Christ not our circumstances.
He began this section with the “O man of God!”
There are over 40 imperatives in this six-chapter letter.
An imperative is a direct command requiring a response.
That is interesting but even more so, 38 of those imperatives are the last 3 chapters…Paul is piling imperative upon imperative.
Then, he gives the granddaddy all imperatives…”I charge you in the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus…”
Paul is verbally grabbing Timothy by the shoulders, giving him a shake.
This is the imperative to keep a focus on Christ and not on our circumstances.
Around AD 33, just a few years before Paul wrote this letter to Timothy…Jesus stood before a Roman ruler in Judea named Pontius Pilate and made his good confession:
When asked if he was the King of the Jews, Jesus replied, “My kingdom is not of this world”.
“For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth”.
“You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above”.
“Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice
He made this confession…then he went to the cross.
Now, Timothy has the opportunity to stand firm before hostile people both inside and outside the church and state clearly who Jesus is as well.
“Keep the commandment” is not keep the OT law, but it all that God has given to Timothy through Paul as outlined in this letter.
It is a blanket imperative to keep all the imperatives that he has received…”I charge you, to be faithful in all that God has called you to. ”
Look at the focus:
-The presence of God who gives life to all things
-And of Christ Jesus who made the good confession, unto his death.
-Remain faithful until the Lord returns in his own time
-He is the sovereign king of Kings and Lord of Lords.
-He alone is without beginning and without end.
-He lives in blazing unapproachable light
-He has never been seen, he is transcendent above all his creation
-To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen
Do you see what happened…this turned from a charge to a prayer…I charged you to focus on the Lord, then Paul went on a riff about the greatness of God…and he finished with “Amen.”
Like Paul relativized health and wealth to godliness.
Compared to godliness, what are mere health and wealth?
Here he is relativizing Timothy’s life and struggles and opponents…he wants Timothy to see his circumstances in light of God’s grandeur.
He is not trivializing his difficult circumstances; he is relativizing them.
This is outlined so well in Hebrews, a book we will be working our way through a year from now.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses
Starts off…others have done this, you can as well.
Crystal going to boot camp, I said, “you can do it, I know other young women who have…you have as much or more grit than they do.”
Since then, when talking to apprehensive young men…”I’ve said, my sweet old 18 year old daughter did it…you can!)
This isn’t shaming…it simple saying…
They did it, God helped them…you can do it, God will help you.
let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
Hebrews 12:1-3
We must look at our circumstances through the lens of the reality of the sovereign God.
What Paul gave Tim and us in this passage:
1. God’s positive ethic…pay attention to all that God is for.
2. Train to live all in on for what God is all for.
3. To do this, we must look to continually to Christ not just to our circumstances.
We talk a lot about training for godliness…because Timothy, as I said is full of imperatives…Paul said we are to train for godliness.
But Paul is not advocating merely for more Christian grit…though we certainly need that.
Paul was a man whose heart had been captured by Christ…he was, to quote FF Bruce in his great book on Paul…”the apostle of the heart set free.”
We pay attention to God’s positive ethic, we train to fight the good fight of the faith, we look to Christ not to our circumstances…so that we will learn to love Jesus.
Jesus loves you is certainly wonderful news.
Don’t miss how wonderful it is that Jesus wants you to love him.
He doesn’t need us to love him; he is happy with his life…but we need to love him to be happy with ours.
It is what your heart is designed for…but sin has broken us, and idols deceive us.
But Jesus has and is changing our hearts…he is restoring them to the original design.
Sure, to love him is to obey him…he said this is so.
But we can become people who obey him because we love him…I want this.
I am confident that if you pay attention to your own heart…it is what you want as well.
Train to trust…but don’t just grit your teeth, suck it up…do that if need be.
But the goal is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind, strength.
There is a will element in loving anyone…but there is also a deep heart, emotional, desire element as well.
Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
That is certainly wonderful…it is also wonderful that Jesus wants me to love him…do what you do, become who you are becoming…because you love him.