We’ve been reading our way through 1 Timothy.  Timothy was in Ephesus, trying to get some things straightened out in the church there.  If we think of Ephesus at all, we may imagine some hot, dusty burg, a small place.  Ephesus was a major city, an important trade and worship center with a population by some estimates of around 200,000: about the size of Little Rock or Amarillo.  On any list, Ephesus is among the top ten cities of the Roman Empire.  People from all over, with all kinds of ideas, were everywhere in Ephesus.  In cosmopolitan places (and times), there is a tendency to develop a cosmopolitan, pluralistic attitude.  Everyone can be right, and so can I.  As long as you’re enjoying yourself and not harming others, there’s no wrong way.  Incidentally, how do we define or measure harm?  How does God, His will and His Word, figure into that calculus?

In the church in Ephesus, Timothy has encountered those who balked at “the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ” and “godly teaching” (6:3).  It’s not that they rejected godly teaching; they just disagreed about what counted as the truly godly teaching.  They disagreed about what really was “the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  What does Jesus teach?  What does he want from us?  What does he want us to do?  What relation with the world and contemporary values would Jesus want us to have?  Disagreement about these questions continues.  Does Jesus teach what all the most enlightened minds of our times also teach, or does he teach something different, quite different?  Is Jesus another instance of the Enlightened Teacher—like Guru Nanak, Buddha, Confucius, or Lao Tzu, or is he really something more?

Jesus teaches obedience to God, radical obedience.  Not the obedience of the Law, but the obedience that enables believers to want to keep the Law in and from their covenant-sealed hearts.  The changed heart does the Law.  What is the Law?  Love God and one another.  Love fulfills the Law, as Paul reminds us (Rom 13:10, Gal 5:14).  Sin perverts this.  Sin teaches that disobedience is the highest form of obedience, obedience to the god within.  Swedish theologian Anders Nygren, not quite a century back, wrote that sin “is man’s self-centred rebellion against God.”[1]  Self-centered here does not mean selfish; it means a way of thinking that teaches you are responsible for your own salvation by pursuing your own truth.  Self-centered, here, means the teaching that teaches you become your truest self by hearing the truth within you.  Now, God tells us that obedience is the direction away from sin.  Obedience at root has to do with listening, listening to God.  God speaks to us, oh yes, in and by this book.

Nygren’s contemporary Dietrich Bonhoeffer identified the ongoing challenge of our faith: “it’s only through obedience that you come to learn the truth.”[2]  Think about that a moment.  It’s by doing Christian faith, doing Christian life, that the truth of this faith is revealed to us.  No one begins with the truth of Christianity; we all begin by living our way into what Christians do, and, by God’s grace, finding truth in this living as we do it.  To obey, we must listen.  Methodist pastor and theologian William H. Willimon writes that the ongoing problem for believers in these times is that, “In the church [. . .] we usually opt for love at the expense of truth.”[3]  We have a tendency to opt for love at the expense of obedience.  Let’s just love and not get too worked up about that obedience part, that listening part—just listen to your heart!  That’s what Oprah and the radio tell us.  We opt for love at the expense of listening.  I don’t need to listen!  I’ll just love!  But we’ll never grow in the truth, that way.  God tells us a few things in this book about hearts that do not listen, hearts that listen to the heart.

There are certainly parts of Christian faith, maybe many parts, that are hard to understand; it’s hard to understand why it must be this way and not that way.  What makes this true and that not true?  Why can’t this other way be right, too?  Why can’t we all be right, in our own ways?

In Paul’s time, several varieties of following Jesus were emerging.  That didn’t mean all were the way of true obedience, the way of true love.  The key question for each variety was this: Who is Jesus?  The answer can be as simple or as complex as you like.  Which Jesus do we prefer?  Does Jesus emphasize salvation or justice?  Which is more important?  Does God choose everyone, or only some?  On what basis?  Do we choose God?  What does God want for us?

Paul laments those—in the church!—whom he describes as “people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain” (6:5).  The pretense of godliness, the veneer of godliness—precisely what Jesus criticized about the Pharisees.  The Pharisees were sticklers for the rules, rules they had made . . . based upon God’s Word.  They may have begun by wanting true holiness and godliness, but they always end with the self-salvation that comes with self-love, elevating one’s purer self over all those un-pure ones out there, refusing even to be in the same room as the unclean.  Self-love is deeply invested in self-truth.  Can there be people in the church, as Paul writes, “who have been robbed of the truth”?  In church?  The further they depart from the sound doctrine of Jesus Christ, yes.  Now, don’t go thinking I’m pointing fingers in this room.  I’m talking about the larger church.

What is the test for Christian truth?  It’s not “progressive” ethics, with its untenable foundation upon self-truth, which is self-love in principled disguise.[4]  I remember visiting a church in Pflugerville years ago, a Presbyterian church.  The message that day was based on the Tao Te Ching.  Everyone was very polite, nice, just like Jesus.  There is a difference between accepting everybody and accepting everything, but many Christians seem to be forgetting this.  It’s seems easier to love than to think.  Our culture is quite helpful when it comes to blurring the distinction between accepting everyone and accepting everything.  Reviewing the situation in ancient Israel, theologian and New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann might have been describing our own times: “Political change brought social upheaval in its train, with a consequent lowering of moral standards.”[5]  It’s not only Christians who see this.  Over the past sixty years, Americans have been witnessing a change in moral standards, certainly; in hindsight it’s not really clear that the change has all been improvement.  Love everyone does not mean love everything about everyone.  Be kind does not mean be blind.  God is among us to transform us, not endorse us.  God never says you be you.  He says become who I call you to be in Christ Jesus, through the power of my Holy Spirit.

What is the message of Jesus?  It seems to be about salvation.  What is salvation?  It isn’t self-fulfillment.  It isn’t self-realization.  It isn’t about Me.  It’s about Thee: God.  Now, salvation certainly seems to be about faith.  Faith in what?  Salvation seems to involve godliness.  What is godliness?  Salvation seems to be about a life to come.  What about this life?  A key problem for the church in every age is its relationship with the world outside the doors.  At first glance, it’s not such a bad world, not such a bad life.  God wants us to be good?  The world talks a lot about what is good.  God wants us to flourish, thrive?  The world talks about prosperity, wealth, happiness.  God wants us to serve?  The world praises a service mentality; who doesn’t appreciate really good customer service: a human being, from the same country, at the other end of the line?

So, maybe God’s Word and what the world says aren’t as different as some angry, extremist, cuckoo fringe Christians would have us believe.  Maybe godliness and gain aren’t mutually exclusive.  Maybe gain is a sign of godliness.  So the thinking goes.  Maybe God’s real focus for us is this life, this world.  Maybe God rewards us here; we’d kind of like to be rewarded here, anyway.  What sort of reward could we have here?  Well, what feels rewarding?  Wealth?  Wealth is like freedom, possibility, opportunity; wealth makes things happen, so wealth would be good.  Health is like freedom, so good health is certainly a blessing, so long as we don’t have to do things or deny ourselves.  And happiness?  Definitely rewarding!  Who doesn’t feel most free when they’re most happy?  Who wants to go through this life unhappy?!  We hate people like that!  Jesus was never unhappy!

But how to obtain these best blessings of wealth, health, and happiness in this life?  Well, the Bible tells us, right?  Faith!  Believe it and receive it.  Name it and claim it.  God wants you to be wealthy, healthy, and happy—and we do, too: that’s like the fulfillment of self-love, the proof that self-love and self-truth were the right way all along.  God loves me, and I do, too.  And if you don’t have that wealth, that health, or that happiness?  Why, that’s a faith problem.  Get some!  The result of faith is, what, salvation? righteousness? sanctification? blessing?  Certainly blessing, but blessing, you know—that’s prosperity.  You’ve got to believe in . . . who?  Yourself!  Self-love, self-truth, self-salvation.

Robbed of the truth.  There’s much to be gained by godliness, but it isn’t what’s on offer outside these doors.  Baptist pastor Steven J. Lawson echoes a sentiment we’ve heard elsewhere: “Inevitably,” he writes, “we become like who, or what, we worship.”[6]  God’s Word tells us what true wealth is, what true health is, and what is true happiness.  Where your heart is . . . [there your treasure will be also].  Oh, beloved, where are our hearts?  Is yours like mine: constantly being pulled this way and that?  What good is it to gain the whole world and lose your soul?  He who has the most toys has the most worry.  “Fear Him who, having destroyed the body, has authority to throw your soul in hell” (Lk 12:5).  Jesus isn’t talking about the devil, there.  True happiness isn’t a feeling, an emotion—those come and go, rise and ebb.  Salvation isn’t in feeling but in faith.  Feelings are great—when they’re good—but let’s not rely on them.  True happiness—abiding joy!—is to be reconciled to God, reconnected, forgiven, to have faith that you are.  That faith is in Christ Jesus; that faith is the gift of God through the Holy Spirit.  To keep this faith, though, we must practice obedience to God’s Word and not mistake any attractive words of men for God’s Word.  We can become convinced of the truth of Christianity only by grace, only by doing as God teaches us, tells us to do, by doing this Christian life.

We can get so focused on doing well in this life that we neglect living well.  Paul writes to Timothy about the true wealth, real health, and the highest happiness: “godliness with contentment is great gain.  For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.  But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that” (6:6-8).  Contentment.  The heart desires many things, but there is one needful thing.  Humility, meekness, thanksgiving, gratitude—for some of us, these are the hardest qualities of character to come by, but faith teaches and assures us that the Spirit is with us to give us these gifts and lead us into the fullness of them all.  Practicing our Christian faith, living as Jesus teaches, will get us there.  “Faith,” as Swiss Reformed theologian Emil Brunner suggests—“faith is the origin of hope.”[7]  The Spirit is with us to continue renewing our hearts, renovating them into the houses of prayer and praise, of song, love, and joy which God meant for them to be from the beginning.  “Godliness with contentment”—to me, that sounds like the way to fullness of life, here and hereafter.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

      [1] Nygren, Anders.  Agape and Eros.  1932-1939.  Trans. Philip S. Watson.  New York: Harper and Row, 1969.  223.

               [2] Bonhoeffer, Dietrich.  Cost of Discipleship.  New York: Macmillan, 1959.  68.

               [3] Willimon, William H.  Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry.  Nashville: Abingdon P, 2002.  259.

               [4] As described by Thomas C. Reeves in Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity.  New York: Free Press, 1996.  91.

               [5] Bultmann, Rudolf.  Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting.  Trans. Rev. R. H. Fuller.  New York: Meridian, 1956.  42.

               [6] Steven J. Lawson.  Made in Our Image: What Shall We Do with a “User-Friendly” god?  Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 2000.  162.

      [7] Brunner, Emil.  Faith, Hope, and Love.  Philadelphia: Westminster P, 1956.  46.