Love and doctrine
This week's lesson is on 1 Timothy 1:3-7:
This is from a letter from the apostle Paul to his associate Timothy almost two thousand years ago. He was addressing the tendency of people to want to make themselves known as Christian teachers, even if they didn't exactly know the truth. There's a desire in all people to be recognized and to be seen as useful or indispensable, and that desire can take hold of someone and cause them to be useless and redundant.
The gospel itself is quite simple. We are imperfect humans, created by a perfect God, who paid the ultimate price to make everything okay and buy us some time to get sorted out. His love inspires our love and we become better people. That's it, pretty much. But why teach a message everyone else teaches when you can teach something new, and exciting, and untrue? Then you're unique and special and everyone has to buy your books and listen to your podcast!
And that's the problem Paul found himself encountering. People were becoming Christians but then they were getting taught all of this nonsense afterwards that confused them and caused controversy over nothing. Instead of being useful, as teachers of the truth, a lot of Christian leaders were spewing nonsense and making it harder for people to learn. They were worse than useless!
I've heard these sorts of things even in modern times. People squabble over the dumbest stuff. I've heard long debates over papal succession and "lineage" that simply don't matter if we're all connected to the Holy Spirit and have the Bible. Who cares who your pastor's teacher's professor's mentor's priest's teacher was when we have access to God himself? And yet people actually argue about this stuff. People debate how the end times in the Bible will unfold and when they will occur. We are going to heaven! If the world ends tomorrow or in another two thousand years, what does it matter compared to the fact that we are saved? And yet a good chunk of the modern church obsesses on this kind of thing!
And what about all of the books and talks about angels and spiritual warfare and various people's unvetted prophesies about what they think is going to happen? Do those things help people to love more, and to be better people, and to find the God who created them? Or do they just sell more books and give people a little ego boost from the fame of being a sought after author or speaker? What is the fruit of these teachings?
Good doctrine is important, but even more important is believing God and having him as part of our individual and communal lives. God's work is advanced by faith, not by controversies and vain attempts to be seen as a teacher of the law. Christian doctrine shouldn't puff us up with useless speculation. It should point to God and to his truth and help us to become better Christians.
Paul tells Timothy to command these people to stop teaching false things, and also to not focus on things that don't matter doctrinally, things which don't promote love and faith but which take away from them. When we focus on endless end times speculation, or arguments about whose denomination's founder was more pure doctrinally, or whether angels act certain ways or not, we are looking at something other than God as our source of spiritual truth. And when we have these endless desperate voices all trying to be heard and seen as the source of truth, it divides us as a church and creates controversy over speculation.
That's not to say that there aren't a lot of very entertaining doctrines out there, or that none of them might be useful. But if they aren't things that Jesus worried about, chances are we don't need to worry too much about them either. Ask yourself, "is this helping me to become a better Christian?" If not, it may be meaningless speculation and a waste of everyone's time.
As I urged you when I went into Macedonia, stay there in Ephesus so that you may command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer or to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies. Such things promote controversial speculations rather than advancing God’s work—which is by faith. The goal of this command is love, which comes from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Some have departed from these and have turned to meaningless talk. They want to be teachers of the law, but they do not know what they are talking about or what they so confidently affirm.
This is from a letter from the apostle Paul to his associate Timothy almost two thousand years ago. He was addressing the tendency of people to want to make themselves known as Christian teachers, even if they didn't exactly know the truth. There's a desire in all people to be recognized and to be seen as useful or indispensable, and that desire can take hold of someone and cause them to be useless and redundant.
The gospel itself is quite simple. We are imperfect humans, created by a perfect God, who paid the ultimate price to make everything okay and buy us some time to get sorted out. His love inspires our love and we become better people. That's it, pretty much. But why teach a message everyone else teaches when you can teach something new, and exciting, and untrue? Then you're unique and special and everyone has to buy your books and listen to your podcast!
And that's the problem Paul found himself encountering. People were becoming Christians but then they were getting taught all of this nonsense afterwards that confused them and caused controversy over nothing. Instead of being useful, as teachers of the truth, a lot of Christian leaders were spewing nonsense and making it harder for people to learn. They were worse than useless!
I've heard these sorts of things even in modern times. People squabble over the dumbest stuff. I've heard long debates over papal succession and "lineage" that simply don't matter if we're all connected to the Holy Spirit and have the Bible. Who cares who your pastor's teacher's professor's mentor's priest's teacher was when we have access to God himself? And yet people actually argue about this stuff. People debate how the end times in the Bible will unfold and when they will occur. We are going to heaven! If the world ends tomorrow or in another two thousand years, what does it matter compared to the fact that we are saved? And yet a good chunk of the modern church obsesses on this kind of thing!
And what about all of the books and talks about angels and spiritual warfare and various people's unvetted prophesies about what they think is going to happen? Do those things help people to love more, and to be better people, and to find the God who created them? Or do they just sell more books and give people a little ego boost from the fame of being a sought after author or speaker? What is the fruit of these teachings?
Good doctrine is important, but even more important is believing God and having him as part of our individual and communal lives. God's work is advanced by faith, not by controversies and vain attempts to be seen as a teacher of the law. Christian doctrine shouldn't puff us up with useless speculation. It should point to God and to his truth and help us to become better Christians.
Paul tells Timothy to command these people to stop teaching false things, and also to not focus on things that don't matter doctrinally, things which don't promote love and faith but which take away from them. When we focus on endless end times speculation, or arguments about whose denomination's founder was more pure doctrinally, or whether angels act certain ways or not, we are looking at something other than God as our source of spiritual truth. And when we have these endless desperate voices all trying to be heard and seen as the source of truth, it divides us as a church and creates controversy over speculation.
That's not to say that there aren't a lot of very entertaining doctrines out there, or that none of them might be useful. But if they aren't things that Jesus worried about, chances are we don't need to worry too much about them either. Ask yourself, "is this helping me to become a better Christian?" If not, it may be meaningless speculation and a waste of everyone's time.
Comments
Post a Comment