Showing posts with label 2 Timothy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2 Timothy. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 09, 2023

Times of Difficulty

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.”

We are living in Paul’s “times of difficulty”. Can any Christian honestly dispute that?

If you ever doubt it for a moment, reflect on what you are seeing on YouTube and your TV, reading about online and in your newspaper — if anyone still reads anything other than the free tabloids they hand out on the subway. I did walk past one fellow delivering the national paper early one morning last week, but the houses of his subscribers were so far apart he had to use his car to do his deliveries efficiently. That’s where print is headed: the way of the dinosaur.

Like marriage.

Wednesday, October 19, 2022

A One-Sentence Prayer

“The Lord be with your spirit.”

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

This first quote is the last line of 2 Timothy. The second is the last line of both Galatians and Philemon. Paul liked to close with it when writing people he cared about passionately, meaning that it wasn’t a throwaway sentiment or a meaningless spiritual cliché. It’s more than a fond wish; it’s a one-sentence prayer, or a blessing.

So what is he saying exactly?

Sunday, May 30, 2021

Curing Instability

“… a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.”

“Among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women …”

“… that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”

Weakness of will. Instability. Confusion. None of these qualities have been traditionally considered admirable in Christian circles, and with good reason. Indecisive people make poor signposts. Our role models rarely include those who fail to exhibit self-control. Erratic individuals are not likely to have your back in times of crisis.

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

A Gap Anticipated

“All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

The Bible repeatedly claims to be God-breathed, both in its component parts and in its entirety. Statements to the effect that God has spoken are made several hundred times in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel alone, and they are sprinkled liberally through the rest of the scripture. Other writers and speakers in the Bible made similar assertions to that which Paul makes here: that the whole thing (Law, Prophets, Psalms, Letters, Gospels) is God speaking, right down its glyphs and diacritics in the original languages.

Stop and think about that a moment.

Sunday, April 12, 2020

The Fate of the Coward

We are living in scary times. People are afraid.

Biblical fear can be good or bad. Perfected love banishes it, but in a fallen world, fully mature love is a rarity and fear still serves the occasional valid purpose in God’s dealings with us. For one, Christians are encouraged to bring our pursuit of holiness to completion “in the fear of God”. For another, fear sometimes gets your attention in a busy world when nothing else will.

Our modern translations tell us one of the things the miracles of Christ regularly produced was awe, usually accompanied by giving glory to God. The word for “awe” in Greek is phobos, more commonly translated “fear”. This is fear at its most useful.

Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Hooks and Nooses

“[I]f you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you.”

We often have more than one reason for saying the things we say. God could have said, “If you serve their gods, I will be offended.” That would certainly have been true. He could also have said, “If you serve their gods, you will find it useless.” This too is true. Inanimate carvings of wood and stone have no power to protect or deliver. He could have said, “You don’t understand that serving their gods is really serving demons.” Once again, entirely true. He could even have said, “If you serve their gods, I will punish you severely.”

This was most definitely the case.

Sunday, July 15, 2018

My Church is on Life Support

Two verses about possible futures:

“What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”

“Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my days.’ ”

Right. Now let me describe for you an increasingly familiar scenario.

Monday, April 30, 2018

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (9)

It is never a good thing to be on the wrong side of a theological question. Sometimes it’s disastrous.

But it’s also possible to be on the right side of a question while making the wrong sort of argument: one that cannot be substantiated or does not prove your point.

Kent Rieske is trying to make the case that the Calvinistic definition of “election” is not a biblical one. I’d argue his basic thesis is correct.

Tuesday, April 03, 2018

Christians That Need to Be Saved

A man in a local church I used to attend had a habit of coming up to people and asking them exactly when and how they had been saved. He would probe for very specific details of the blessed event, presumably to confirm that the person he was interrogating was the real deal, genuinely a believer. I can’t remember what he did when he was dissatisfied with the answer but I’m not sure it was anything particularly helpful.

When he did it to me, it kind of threw me. Frankly, I didn’t know how to respond to him.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Right Place, Wrong Way

Christendom is full of people getting to the right place the wrong way.

“Well, that’s a good thing,” we might say. “The important thing is that we get there, right?”

That’s certainly true. Correct conclusions matter. They affect what we do and how we live. But how we arrive at them is often just as important.

In his new book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Dr. Jordan Peterson gets to a pretty good place by examining dominance hierarchies in lobsters. No, I’m not kidding.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Of Trees and Floods

“Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?’ ”

I have no clue what you’re thinking about right now. Not a one. That’s normal, I think.

Despite this, when we read novels and the writer tells us precisely what is on the mind of the protagonist, we barely notice how bizarre that is. After all, it is the author’s story and it is his prerogative to drive its narrative or provide insight into its characters via whatever literary technique he chooses.

Not in the real world. If a news reporter presumes to inform us what President Trump really intends when he thumbs his latest tweet into his iPhone for the nation, we rightly think she is overstepping her role just a bit. How could she possibly know for sure?

Bible history is a little different.