FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

From Last Lesson: This is what happened one time when Moses was atop Mount Sinai in intimate conversation with God:

Right in the middle of something Moses was saying, God interrupted: “Get back down there to those crazy people.” Moses went down to find the Israelites in compromising positions. Before an idol (a golden calf), a meal had turned into an orgy. God said to Moses, “They’ve had it now. It’s all over for these Israelites.” However, Moses, who didn’t want to be the last Israelite on earth, said to God, “OK, if you want to wipe out all the descendants of your great servants like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and you want all that energy you used in getting us out of Egypt to be wasted, go ahead. But, God, don’t you think you should change your mind on this one?” (Paraphrased, see Exodus 32:1, 7-14). And, behold, Moses changed God’s mind. It doesn’t appear that there was any love involved as far as the writer was concerned; it appears more evident that Moses was some great persuader, even of God Almighty!

Paul knew something more than this though for he had been well schooled in that Old Testament way of thinking about God. Paul surely wouldn’t have claimed to understand it all, but the one thing he decided about was how this opportunity to be a minister of the good news of Jesus Christ had come to him: “

“Although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 1:13-14).

In Paul’s pain, he penned a great confession of faith. Having committed great wrongs in his life and suffered imprisonment and beating for his faith, Paul knew the meaning of God’s grace and mercy. To this young man who would follow in Paul’s footsteps as a preacher of the gospel, Paul wrote:

“This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life” (1 Timothy 1:15-16).

Paul wants to be an example of what happens when one, even the foremost sinner, happens into the grace of God. Paul believed that if God could love him and use him, in spite of his overpowering sin, it could happen to anybody.

This is the good news. God’s grace reaches all of us, you, me, and everybody else. We know this to be true, not because of how well things go for us, how saintly we are, or how few sins are on our list, but because we know in our hearts how mercifully God has dealt with us. Our acts of rebellion have never broken the reality of God’s stubborn love for us. Therefore, our failures cannot keep us either from the caring presence of God or from faithful service to those in need of the gospel and the Lord whom it proclaims. We cannot escape our responsibility to witness to God’s faithfulness because of our unworthiness. Dearest readers, because of God’s mercy, forgiveness is a reality, and we go forth, in a spirit of praise, to tell others of a God who has never forsaken us and who, even now, strengthens us day by day.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

From Last Lesson: The God Paul served and upheld was angry and unforgiving.

The only way of responding to people who didn’t appease God the way that Paul thought was appropriate was to condemn them with punishment or even death. Yes, Paul had, on occasion, something to do with death sentences to the people of God, and the killings were in God’s name. Can you imagine being so sure of your own conception of God that you would be willing to put to death or harm another person who found a different way of describing and relating to the same God?

We can understand the depth of Paul’s gratitude when he said to Timothy:

“And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:12-13).

That may be just a sentence to some of us, but it was a profound confession of Paul which, undoubtedly, still ripped him apart.

Paul had done a bit of thinking about why he, of all people, had been called out by God to minister precisely to those whom he had hated and hurt. How could he ever earn the right to speak to people he had abused and the survivors of those whose deaths he had instigated? Maybe with sins bringing about less dire consequences than these particular sins of Paul, many of us often wonder about our worthiness to do what we are convinced God is calling us to do. What right have I to proclaim to you the good news of God in Jesus Christ whose high standards I have not always kept and whom I have assuredly hurt through my carelessness and willfulness? I assure you that my being here and speaking to you about the most important truths in your lives has much more to do with God than with me.

I somehow take it as an act of maturity to be able to consider the possibility that we might not actually deserve something of value, something of pivotal consequence, or some great privilege which has come to us by grace alone. In terms of our faith and awareness of God’s great expressions of love, we can reflect, search, ponder, and study the matter for a lifetime and never find anything along the way that we did or could have done to earn all that God gives us.

The biblical writers at times just can’t come to grips with a God who is so loving and forgiving. Especially in the Old Testament we find writers who explain God’s grace in the face of human sinfulness as, actually, a change of God’s mind. The gist is that God, when people sin, has to be angry, offended, and instantly in the process of planning punishment when, for some unknown reason that seems to have more to do with luck than love, God changes His mind. That’s what happened one time when Moses was atop Mount Sinai in intimate conversation with God.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Paul once sat down to put on paper his thoughts about what serving Jesus Christ meant to him. When he did, his reflection caused him to take in the whole of his experience with God in Christ, from the beginning to the time that he recorded for Timothy.

Paul, like the rest of us who would be honest, had to begin with gratitude for God’s mercy in sharp contrast with a leaning to be free of God. As he looked back over it all, downs and ups and all the in-between times as well, what Paul saw most clearly and unmistakably was the mercy of God evidenced in nearly everything this colorful apostle had seen and done both before and after he committed his life to God through Jesus Christ and endured in taking a stand for Jesus Christ in a pagan world.

You know, when somebody who has been through hard times or is in the midst of hard times talks about how good God is, I listen. The person has my attention. I feel the same way about someone who can own up to the fact that she or he hasn’t always done her or his best for God. The test of God’s goodness is not tied to how well things go for us and how successful we are, though I don’t mean to suggest that you have to be either destitute or despicable to understand or own the prevalence of God’s mercy in your life.

The point is: when do you say it? When can we testify to our belief in the goodness of God? Only when we’re getting our way? Only during periods of obvious success or prosperity? Only when there are no questions that disturb us or keep us awake? Can we only testify to the goodness of God when our pathways are smooth? If so, what Paul is saying to his protege, Timothy, will not make sense to us. If there is not some space in our theological selves for a God who is working for our good, especially when times are trying and discouraging and we are running our hardest away from God, a hearing of Paul’s word is not possible for us.

We have to understand that when Paul testified, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work . . .” (1 Timothy 1:12 NLT), he was writing about strength to excel and command notice but strength to endure, to get by, get up, and get at it another day. Paul, as arrogant as he could be, didn’t believe he could have made it in his strength alone; rather, if it wasn’t for divine strength, strength from beyond himself, Paul would have run out of anything to offer. That divine strength came strictly because of God’s mercy. Paul knew it. “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work.”

Against a background of Paul’s religious fanaticism which brought about his greatest sins, paradoxically, he had persecuted the people of God in His name. If people didn’t speak of God and worship Him in the way Paul envisioned as proper, he regarded them as godless. The God Paul served and upheld was angry and unforgiving.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Where noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation®, NLT © 2015 by Tyndale House.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture: 1 Timothy 1:12-17

Have you ever had any serious reflection about how loving parents can take in stride verbal abuse and other teenage acting out from their children? Have you ever wondered how, on the morning after you spouted out harshly and hatefully at your mother when she called your hand on an obvious violation of acceptable behavior, she could greet you with a smile and a kiss and an aggravatingly sincere, “I love you”? Haven’t you wondered how, on the evening after you blessed out your father for telling you can’t keep on doing something, he could show up on the tail end of a hard day at the office with tickets for the two of you to attend the football game you were dying to see? Or, after a whole season of adolescent rebellion and all kinds of reasons not to trust anymore, how can parents send a child to college to face a tough world as an adult with nothing but trust and goodwill? A mystery.

Many of us, I’m sure, have had on occasion some sense of distance between ourselves and God and some sense that at times in our lives that we have knowingly and continually violated God’s will and openly rebelled in our own way against Him. Those memories cause us both sadness at how unnecessary and inappropriate such a way of life was as well as amazement that God kept on loving us and caring for us anyway. It’s kind of staggering, isn’t it?

One of the great fathers of the church, Saint Augustine, reflected on his life before relationship with God in his great devotional classic, Confessions. He described eloquently this dimension of God about which we’re speaking. You see, before his dramatic conversion, Augustine had been openly a scoundrel with quite an appetite for sins of the flesh. In retrospect, he became convinced that even in his most clear-cut periods of self-alienation from God, in an absolutely pre-Christian condition, God was bringing him into certain situations which finally had a bearing on his opening himself to relationship with God. That’s quite some faith, isn’t it? In prayer Saint Augustine reflected:

Is there any evil that is not found in my acts, or if not in my acts, in my words, or if not in my words, in my will? But you, O Lord, are good and merciful, and your right hand has had regard for the depth of my death, and from the very bottom of my heart it has emptied out an abyss of corruption.… I have not forgotten, nor will I keep silent concerning the sharpness of your scourge and the wonderful speed of your mercy.

I uttered sighs, and you gave ear to me. I wavered back and forth, and you guided me. I wandered upon the broad way of the world, but you did not forsake me. ¹

“You did not forsake me.” That could be a part of our prayers to God as well. No matter how out of line we were or how far away from God, God did not forsake us. This is also the sentiment of the apostle Paul.

To Be Continued

¹ John K. Ryan, translator, The Confessions of St. Augustine.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.