Corpus Christi is a hot place.  When we lived there, I saw what amazed me: a man, walking.  It wasn’t once or twice.  I saw him nearly every day, walking along Alameda out in that beating heat.  What staggered me was the insulated jacket he always wore.  Well, he looked tired enough—hot, sweating, just sort of dragging along—but he kept going, day after day.  I never did pull over to ask him who he was or why he was doing this to himself, what he hoped to gain.  Maybe he was just a little tetched in the head.  The one thing that gave me some comfort when I saw him was that, along with that insulated jacket he was always wearing, he also had one of those thirsty-two ouncer cups, lid, straw, and all.  I don’t know where he got it; it was just a white Styrofoam cup.  I liked to think that it was full of ice water.  Walking, walking, walking.

All these years later, thinking about the journey we all must make through this life in this world so far from God and yet God so near, I think of that poor man.  But maybe he wasn’t poor?  Not quite right?  Isn’t that how the world regards us?  Walking in the heat with that hot jacket on?  Crazy!  Beloved, we all carry a burdensome load.  God gives us relief under that load on that journey.  He gives us water: cool, clean, refreshing, restoring, strengthening water.  Oh, how good that water tastes in the heat!  Oh, how good that water feels!  How sad to think of those who don’t have that water, just stuck in the heat with that burden, without sense enough to know it; without sense enough to realize their predicament.

What we live for matters.  Do you have a goal, any goal?  Are you making strides toward that goal, or still just planning and talking?  I have many plans, and I’m very good at talking.  And faith teaches me that God moves my feet, my hands, because He has moved my heart.  He has changed and is changing my heart.  It’s a long journey, though.  The goal is on the distant horizon, like the light before the early light.  Perseverance in pursuing our goals matters.  Are there any meaningful goals that can be achieved without perseverance, patience, hope, and faith?  Some people dream and plan and labor and save and sacrifice for a nice home, or a nice car, or a nice boat, or a nice vacation.  I feel the attraction in each of those!  Let us, however, dream and plan and labor and save and sacrifice for the life to come.  We know very well that there are real sacrifices required to obtain and enjoy the good things in this life—how much more the next life!

And there’s the problem.  How much sacrifice is too much?  The great difficulty facing the church today isn’t too much zeal for the next life.  The problem with which we must all come to terms, me just as much as anyone, is wanting, even preferring to get the most out of this life.  How do we balance this natural desire to have fulfillment here with God’s call to be with Him in eternal life?  Calvin wonders about the “temporary life” we experience here on earth.  To what do God’s promises amount if this life is all there is?  Calvin asks, “what remains but that” we are “overloaded for a time with divine kindness [. . .], that [we] might at last perish eternally?”[1]  Optimistic atheists could nearly affirm that much.  If there were any.

God tells us what it means to live to the full here, but people are continually coaxed back to what the world says about living life to the full.  The quiet luxury of a Lincoln.  The fast fun of a Fiat.  The timeless elegance of a home decorated by Dior.  Down home country comfort by Pioneer Woman: so affordable!  We know that fun, fullness, fulfillment, and perfection are not in things, yet the world continues to sing the virtues of things.  We listen to those songs.  We find our momentum leaning that direction.  We want some quick satisfactions because the journey is long, difficult, and tiring.  Walking, walking, walking.

It’s neither my intention nor desire to make anyone feel guilty about having a nice car or a nice home, or for taking a nice vacation.  These can be blessings, too.  What I am saying, what I believe Paul is also saying to Timothy, is to maintain focus.  He began his letter by urging Timothy to help the church stay focused.  Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.  More, let’s keep our hearts anchored there, knowing that the world in which we live is very skilled at finding ways to nudge our hearts in other directions.  The pursuit of material enjoyments is only one such direction.  The world doesn’t insist on one direction; all it insists upon is that fulfillment will not be found in only one direction: God’s direction.  The only god you ought to obey, they say, is the god in you, who whispers so persuasively that whatever you desire in any given moment is good, right, and true.

“But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness” (6:11).  The living God speaks to us, also.  As we “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness,” we are fleeing temptations to follow other directions to supposed fulfillment.  We won’t pursue what we don’t desire.  We want as little as possible to do with what we do not desire.  We do not desire sorrow.  We do not desire poverty or hunger.  We do not desire loneliness or social rejection.  We do not desire persecution.  Do we desire Christ?  What would that mean?  What can Christ give us that we can’t get here?  I’ve got food.  I’ve got a car—two, actually.  I’ve got a family, a house, a little money in the bank, a new TV, the internet.  I’ve got it all.  I’ve got it made.

Apart from the presence of the Spirit, we cannot desire what Paul urges upon Timothy.  In my seminary days, a few of my professors liked to speak of Christians as Easter people.  We are that, of course.  We are also Pentecost people.  Whatever desire for Christ we have, whatever desire for God and faith, comes to us through the Holy Spirit.  We are Easter people because we are Pentecost people.  We live by the Spirit.  “[R]ighteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness”—these are gifts of the Spirit.

Paul is commending gifts of the Spirit.  We know righteousness is crucial—we don’t come to Christ with any of our own to show or offer.  Whether in this life we have much or little, all of us come to Christ with nothing.  In Christ, God offers us everything: the everything that far surpasses in value all we have here.  We rely entirely upon the righteousness of Christ, which means we rely upon the grace of God, which means we rely, entirely, all of us, upon the love of God, the one thing so many take for granted and count as nothing.

All this ought to be a constant cause of humility for us.  There always seem to be those who continue to nurse the holier than thou attitude.  That’s defining ourselves not by whose we are but by who we aren’t—if I may just say so, this is great ignorance, no matter how pious it seems, because, at heart, we are who we most desperately, eagerly wish to believe we are not: fallen people with no power or will in and of ourselves not to be fallen.  I am not more righteous than anyone else.  Christ is more righteous than any of us, than all of us put together; indeed, he is righteousness!  Let us delight in Christ in us; he is the righteousness in us.  Let our expression of that delight be gentleness: patience wedded to humility, compassion magnified by self-knowledge.  Gentleness keeps righteousness from pride, and righteousness keeps gentleness from bird-brained sentimentality.  We know we are supposed to love, but we will never know how to love until we learn this from the Holy Spirit by the Word of God.  The Spirit teaches and enables us—causes us!—to love truth and hate falsehood.  The Spirit teaches and enables us—causes us!—to love others and hate what falsehood does to them.

Paul once again urges Timothy to pursue godliness.  How often he does so in this letter!  Godliness is not the pursuit of righteousness.  Pharisees pursued righteousness; Paul knows all about it!  Godliness is the pursuit of God, desiring God, knowing in mind, heart, soul, and bone that God is our all in all.  Godliness is rejoicing in God our all in all!  The godly man, the godly woman, the godly teen or child, is always making strides toward putting God first.  No one begins with much aptitude for that.  We all must learn it from the Spirit who teaches us, often through one another, always through God’s Word.  The world notices when Christians put God first.  They’re always the first to point out when you or I don’t.

Increasingly, it seems as if those outside the church regard Christians as oddities and worse.  No wonder, when our values and way of life do actually diverge from theirs, from what the world teaches them to desire, value, and pursue.  You can go to churches today where the teaching about what to desire, value, and pursue, doesn’t sound much different from what every other awokened institution instructs.  Godliness, then, must be joined with endurance, walking all that way in the heat with the burden, and the water.

Paul doesn’t commend endurance for the sake of endurance any more than he commends righteousness for the sake of righteousness.  If we’re going to be a persevering people, there must be something—someone—for whom we endure.  We’ll want to endure for that someone’s sake.  We’ve got to have a reason to make it all worthwhile because it’s not fun to be worn down, worn out, by the world.  With God, though, we never run on empty.  It can seem as if the last of the leftover ice in our cup has melted; it can seem hard to get anything through the straw.  God gives the endurance.  God gives the righteousness.  God gives the godliness.  God gives the gentleness.  God gives the water.  God gives the promise: He will give life.  He gives His Word.

At the center of what Paul is asking of Timothy and everyone who would pursue and stay true to life for Christ is faith and love: the fulness of the presence of the Spirit of God.  Without faith and love, none of the other qualities Paul has named do any good.  Be brave.  Without faith, without love, what good will bravery do?  For what does a brave atheist hope?  Be patient.  Without faith or love, what good will patience do?  For what is a patient atheist waiting?  I wonder whether it’s even possible to be brave, patient, gentle, or humble without faith, without love.  Faith and love are the lifeblood of those qualities, the lifeblood of the Christian.  Faith helps us to endure; love causes us to want to.  Faith keeps us aimed at righteousness; love causes us to desire it.  Faith gives us glimpses of God; love causes us to feel God, so close, sometimes!  This summer, one of our own Bethel members had a powerful experience of the salvation presence of Christ, a vision of the glory: it was wonderful!  Oh yes, He fills our cup.

In this life, we need these gifts of the Spirit, these glimpses; we Christians, the Church, need these to “Fight the good fight of the faith” (6:12).  I’d like to tell you it isn’t a fight, but you and I both know that it always is, in this life.  The fight ends when this life ends and we at last die to sin so that we at last may live to righteousness.  Have you ever noticed how many of the old hymns, in the last verse, sing about dying and the life to come, flying away, being there, at last?  “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses [. . . .] [K]eep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about in his own time” (6:12, 14-15).  God wants us.  God has called us, claimed us.  Now, we belong to God.  Now, we are part of the family of God.

Paul urges Timothy, and all of us, to hold onto what has been handed to us, the teaching for Life from Life Himself: our Lord Jesus Christ.  Put the teaching for life into practice, daily; let the Spirit grow you in that soil, by that water, that air, that light.  Strive for a good conscience and a fruitful faith.  Trust God to give you the resolve and to fulfill His resolve in you, “in His own time.”  Let us all, together, “take hold of the life that is truly life” (6:19).

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] John Calvin.  Institutes of the Christian Religion.  1559.  Vol. 2.  Trans. Henry Beveridge.  1845.  Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989.  535.