# commentaries

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 Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and in my flesh, for the sake of his body, I fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. By his body, I mean the Church, of which I was made a servant, according to the office which God gave me to exercise for your sakes. That office is to make the word of God fully known, that secret which has remained hidden throughout all the ages and the generations, but which has now been made manifest to God's dedicated people; for God desired to make known to them how great was the glorious wealth among the Gentiles of this secret now revealed, and that secret is, Christ in you, your glorious hope. It is that Christ whom we proclaim, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man complete in Christ. That is the end for which I toil, striving with his energy, which works mightily within me.<p/></i><p/>Paul begins this passage with a daring thought. He thinks of the sufferings through which he is passing as completing the sufferings of Jesus Christ himself. Jesus died to save his Church; but the Church must be upbuilt and extended; it must be kept strong and pure and true; therefore, anyone who serves the Church by widening her borders, establishing her faith, saving her from errors, is doing the work of Christ. And if such service involves suffering and sacrifice, that affliction is filling up and sharing the very suffering of Christ. To suffer in the service of Christ is not a penalty but a privilege, for it is sharing in his work.<p/>Paul sets out the very essence of the task which has been given him by God. That task was to bring to men a new discovery, a secret kept throughout the ages and the generations and now revealed. This was that the glorious hope of the gospel was not only for the Jews but for all men everywhere. Paul's great contribution to the Christian faith was that he took Christ to the Gentiles and destroyed for ever the idea that God's love and mercy were the property of any one people or any one nation. That is why Paul is in a special sense our saint and our apostle. Had it not been for him Christianity might have become nothing wider than a new Judaism, and we and all other Gentiles might never have received it.<p/>So Paul sets down his great aim. It is to warn every man, and to teach every man, and to present every man complete in Christ.<p/>The Jew would never have agreed that God had any use for every man; he would have refused to accept that he was the God of the Gentiles. This idea would have seemed incredible and even blasphemous. The Gnostic would never have agreed that every man could be warned and taught and presented complete to God. He believed that the knowledge necessary for salvation was so involved and difficult that it must be the possession of the spiritual aristocracy and the chosen few. E. J. Goodspeed quotes a passage from Walter Lipman's Preface to Morals: "As yet no teacher has ever appeared who was wise enough to know how to teach his wisdom to all mankind. In fact, the great teachers have attempted nothing so utopian. They were quite well aware how difficult for most men is wisdom, and they have confessed frankly that the perfect life was for the select few. It is arguable, in fact, that the very idea of teaching the highest wisdom to all men is the recent notion of a humanitarian and romantically democratic age, and that it is quite foreign to the thought of all great teachers." It has always been the case that men have openly or tacitly agreed that wisdom is not for every one.<p/>The fact is that the only thing in this world which is for every man is Christ. It is not every man who can be a thinker. There are gifts which are not granted to every man. Not every man can master every craft, or even every game. There are those who are colour-blind and to whom the loveliness of art means nothing. There are those who are tone-deaf and for whom the glory of music does not exist. Not every man can be a writer or a student or a preacher or a singer. Even human love at its highest is not granted to all men. There are gifts a man will never possess; there are privileges a man will never enjoy; there are heights of this world's attainment which a man will never scale; but to every man there is open the good news of the gospel, the love of God in Christ Jesus and the trans-forming power which can bring holiness into life. 


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<b>LOVE'S STRUGGLE</b> (<a href='B:580 2:1'>Col 2:1</a>)<p/><i> 2:1 I want you to know how great a struggle I am going through for you, and for the people of Laodicaea, and for all those who have never seen me face to face.<p/></i><p/>Here is a brief lifting of the curtain and a poignant glimpse into Paul's heart. He is going through a struggle for these Christians whom he had never seen but whom he loved.<p/>He associates the Laodicaeans with the Colossians, and speaks of all those who had never seen his face. He is thinking of the Christians in that group of three towns in the Lycus valley, Laodicaea, Hierapolis and Colosse and picturing them in his mind's eye.<p/>The word he uses for struggle is a vivid word; it is agon (<a href='S:G73'>G73</a>), from which comes our own word agony. Paul is fighting a hard battle for his friends. We must remember that, when he wrote this letter, he was in prison in Rome, awaiting judgment and almost certain condemnation. What then was his struggle?<p/>(i) It was a struggle in prayer. He must have longed to go to Colosse himself. He must have longed to face the false teachers and deal with their arguments and recall those who were straying from the truth. But he was in prison. There had come a time when there was nothing left to do but to pray; what he could not do himself, he must leave to God. So Paul wrestled in prayer for those whom he could not see. When time and distance and circumstance separate us from those whom we long to help, there is always one way left to help them and that is the way of prayer.<p/>(ii) It may well be that there was another struggle going on in Paul's mind. He was a human being with all a man's natural problems. He was in prison, awaiting trial before Nero, and the issue was almost certainly death. It would have been easy to play the coward and abandon the truth for the sake of safety. Paul well knew that such a desertion would be disastrous in its consequences. If the young Churches knew that Paul had denied Christ, the heart would be taken from them and it would be the end of Christianity for many. His struggle was not for himself alone; it was also for those whose eyes were fixed upon him as their leader and father in the faith. We do well to remember that in any situation there are those who are watching us; and that our action will either confirm or destroy their faith. Our struggle is never for ourselves alone; always the honour of Christ is in our hands and the faith of others in our keeping.<p/><b>(i) THE MARKS OF THE FAITHFUL CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:580 2:2-7'>Col 2:2-7</a>)


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 My struggle is that their hearts may be encouraged, that they may be united together in love, that they may come to all the wealth of the assured ability to take the right decision in any situation, to the knowledge of that truth which only God's own may know, I mean of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.<p/>I say this so that no one may lead you into error by false reasoning with persuasive arguments. For, even if I am absent from you in the body, I am with you in spirit, happy when I see you maintaining your ranks and the solid bulwark of your faith in Christ.<p/>So, then, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, live your life in him. Continue to remain firmly rooted, and go on being built up in him. Continue to be established more and more firmly in the faith, as you were taught it, and to overflow with thanksgiving.<p/></i><p/>Here is Paul's prayer for the Church, and in it we distinguish the great marks which should distinguish a living and faithful Church.<p/>(i) It should be a Church of courageous hearts. Paul prays that their hearts may be encouraged. The word which he uses is parakalein (<a href='S:G3870'>G3870</a>). Sometimes that word means to comfort, sometimes to exhort, but always at the back of it there is the idea of enabling a person to meet some difficult situation with confidence and with gallantry. One of the Greek historians uses it in a most interesting and suggestive way. There was a Greek regiment which had lost heart and was utterly dejected. The general sent a leader to talk to it to such purpose that courage was reborn and a body of dispirited men became fit again for heroic action. That is what parakalein (<a href='S:G3870'>G3870</a>) means here. It is Paul's prayer that the Church may be filled with that courage which can cope with any situation.<p/>(ii) It should be a Church in which the members are knit together in love. Without love there is no real Church. Methods of Church government and ritual are not what matter. These things change from time to time and from place to place. The one mark which distinguishes a true Church is love for God and for the brethren. When love dies, the Church dies.<p/>(iii) It should be a church equipped with every kind of wisdom. Paul here uses three words for wisdom.<p/>(a) In <a href='B:580 2:2'>Col 2:2</a> he uses sunesis (<a href='S:G4907'>G4907</a>), which the Revised Standard Version translates understandingly. We have already seen that sunesis (<a href='S:G4907'>G4907</a>) is what we might call critical knowledge. it is the ability to assess any situation and decide what practical course of action is necessary within it. A real Church will have the practical knowledge of what to do whenever action is called for.<p/>(b) He says that in Jesus are hid all the treasures of wisdom an knowledge. Wisdom is sophia (<a href='S:G4678'>G4678</a>) and knowledge is gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>). These two words do not simply repeat each other; there is a difference between them. Gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>) is the power, almost intuitive and instinctive, to grasp the truth when we see it and hear it. But sophia (<a href='S:G4678'>G4678</a>) is the power to confirm and to commend the truth with wise and intelligent argument, once it has been intuitively grasped. Gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>) is that by which a man grasps the truth; sophia (<a href='S:G4678'>G4678</a>) is that by which a man is enabled to give a reason for the hope that is in him.<p/>So, then, the real Church will have the clear-sighted wisdom which can act for the best in any given situation; the wisdom which can instinctively recognize and grasp the truth when it sees it; and the wisdom which can make the truth intelligible to the thinking mind, and persuasively commend it to others.<p/>All this wisdom, says Paul, is hidden in Christ. The word he uses for hidden is apokruphos (<a href='S:G614'>G614</a>). His very use of that word is a blow aimed at the Gnostics. Apokruphos (<a href='S:G614'>G614</a>) means hidden from the common gaze, and therefore secret. We have seen that the Gnostics believed that a great mass of elaborate knowledge was necessary for salvation. That knowledge they set. down in their books which they called apokruphos (<a href='S:G614'>G614</a>) because they were barred to the ordinary man. By using this one word Paul is saying, "You Gnostics have your wisdom hidden from ordinary people; we too have our knowledge, but it is not hidden in unintelligible books; it is hidden in Christ and therefore open to all men everywhere." The truth of Christianity is not a secret which is hidden but a secret which is revealed.<p/><b>(ii) THE MARKS OF THE FAITHFUL CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:580 2:2-7'>Col 2:2-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (iv) The true Church must have the power to resist seductive teaching. It must be such that men cannot beguile it with enticing words. Enticing words translates the Greek word pithanologia (<a href='S:G4086'>G4086</a>). This was a word of the law-courts; it was the word used for the persuasive power of a lawyer's arguments, which could enable the criminal to escape his just punishment. The true Church should have such a grip of the truth that it is unmoved by seductive arguments.<p/>(v) The true Church should have in it a soldier's discipline. As the Revised Standard Version has it, Paul is glad to hear of the order and of the firmness of the faith of the Colossians. These two words present a vivid picture, for they are both military words. The word translated order is taxis (<a href='S:G5010'>G5010</a>), which means a rank or an ordered arrangement. The Church should be like an ordered army, with every man in his appointed place, ready and willing to obey the word of command. The word translated firmness is stereoma (<a href='S:G4733'>G4733</a>), which means a solid bulwark, an immovable phalanx. It describes an army set out in an unbreakable square, solidly immovable against the shock of the enemy's charge. Within the Church there should be disciplined order and strong steadiness, like the order and steadiness of a trained and disciplined body of troops.<p/>(vi) In the true Church life must be in Christ. Its members must walk in Christ; their whole lives must be lived in his conscious presence. They must be rooted and built in him. There are two pictures here. The word used for rooted is the word which would be used of a tree with its roots deep in the soil. The word used for built is the word which would be used of a house erected on a firm foundation. Just as the great tree is deep-rooted in the soil and draws its nourishment from it, so the Christian is rooted in Christ, the source of his life and strength. Just as the house stands fast because it is built on strong foundations, so the Christian life is resistant to any storm because it is founded on the strength of Christ. Christ is alike the source of the Christian's life and the foundation of his stability.<p/>(vii) The true Church holds fast to the faith which it has received. It never forgets the teaching about Christ which it has been taught. This does not mean a frozen orthodoxy in which all adventure of thought is heresy. We have only to remember how in Colossians Paul strikes out new lines in his thinking about Jesus Christ to see how far that was from his intention. But it does mean that there are certain beliefs which remain the foundation and do not change. Paul might travel down new pathways of thought but he always began and ended with the unchanging and unchangeable truth that Jesus Christ is Lord.<p/>(viii) The distinguishing mark of the true Church is an abounding and overflowing gratitude. Thanksgiving is the constant and characteristic note of the Christian life. As J. B. Lightfoot put it: "Thanksgiving is the end of all human conduct, whether observed in words or works." The one concern of the Christian is to tell in words and to show in life his gratitude for all that God has done for him in nature and in grace. Epictetus was not a Christian, but that little, old, lame slave who became one of the great moral teachers of paganism, wrote: "What else can I, a lame old man, do but sing hymns to God? If, indeed, I were a nightingale, I would be singing as a nightingale; if a swan, as a swan. But, as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must be singing hymns of praise to God. This is my task; I do it, and will not desert this post, as long as it may be given me to fill it; and I exhort You to join with me in this same song." (Epictetus, Discourses 1: 1 6:21). The Christian will always praise God from whom all blessings flow.<p/><b>ADDITIONS TO CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:580 2:8-23'>Col 2:8-23</a>)


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 Beware lest there will be anyone who will carry you off as his spoil, by insisting on the necessity of a so-called philosophy, which is, in fact, an empty delusion, a philosophy which has been handed down by human tradition, and which is concerned with the elements of this world, and not with Christ; for in him there dwells the fullness of the divine nature; and you have found this fullness in him who is the head of every power and authority. In him you have been circumcised with a circumcision not made by man's hands, a circumcision which consists in putting off the whole of that part of you which is dominated by sinful human nature, which you were able to do by the circumcision which belongs to Christ. You were buried with him in the act of baptism, and in that act you were raised with him through your faith in the effective working of God, who raised him from the dead. God made you alive with him, when you were dead in your sins and were still uncircumcised Gentiles. He forgave you all your sins, and wiped out the charge-list which set out all your self-admitted debts, a charge-list which was based on the ordinances of the law and was in direct opposition to you. He nailed it to his Cross and put it right out of sight. He stripped the powers and authorities of all their power and publicly put them to shame, and, through the Cross, led them captive in his triumphal train.<p/>Let no one take you to task in matters of food or drink, or with regard to yearly festivals and monthly new moons and weekly sabbaths. These are only the shadow of things to come; the real substance belongs to Christ. Let no one rob you of your prize by walking in ostentatious humility in the worship of angels, making a parade of the things he has seen, vainly inflated with pride because he is dominated by his sinful human nature and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, supplied and held together by the joints and muscles, increases with the increase which only God can give.<p/>If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you continue to submit yourselves to their rules and regulations, as if you were still living in a world without God? "Handle not! Taste not! Touch not!" are their slogans. These are rules which are humanly taught and humanly imposed, and they are rules which deal with things which are destined for decay as soon as they are used. These things have a reputation for wisdom, with their self-imposed devotion and their flaunting humility and their stern treatment of the body, but they have no kind of value in remedying the indulgence of sinful human nature.<p/></i><p/>There can be no doubt that for us this is one of the most difficult passages Paul ever wrote. For those who heard or read it for the first time it would be crystal clear. The trouble is that it is packed from beginning to end with allusions to the false teaching which was threatening to wreck the Colossian Church. We do not know precisely what that teaching was. Therefore the allusions are obscure and we can only guess. But every sentence and every phrase would go straight home to the minds and the hearts of the Colossians.<p/>It is so difficult that we propose to treat it in a slightly different way from our usual practice. We have set it out as a whole, in what is more of a paraphrase than a translation. We will take out its leading ideas, for it is possible to see the main lines of the false teaching which was troubling Colosse; and then, after we have looked at it as a whole, we shall examine it in more detail in shorter sections.<p/>One thing clear is that the false teacher swished the Colossians to accept what can only be called additions to Christ. They were teaching that Jesus Christ himself is not sufficient; that he was not unique; that he was one among many manifestations of God; and that it was necessary to know and to serve other divine powers in addition to him. We can distinguish five additions to Christ which these false teachers wished to make.<p/>(i) They wished to teach men an additional philosophy (<a href='B:580 2:8'>Col 2:8</a>). As they saw it, the simple truth preached by Jesus and preserved in the gospel was not enough. It had to be filled out by an elaborate system of pseudo-philosophical thought which was far too difficult for the simple and which only the intellectual could understand.<p/>(ii) They wished men to accept a system of astrology (<a href='B:580 2:8'>Col 2:8</a>). As we shall see, there is a doubt about the meaning but we think it most likely that the elements of the world were the elemental spirits of the universe, especially of the stars and the planets. It was the teaching of these false teachers that men were still under these influences and needed a special knowledge, beyond that which Jesus could give, to be liberated from them.<p/>(iii) They wished to impose circumcision on Christians (<a href='B:580 2:11'>Col 2:11</a>). Faith was not enough; circumcision had to be added. A badge in the flesh was to take the place of, or at least be an addition to, an attitude of the heart.<p/>(iv) They wished to lay down ascetic, rules and regulations (<a href='B:580 2:16'>Col 2:16</a>; <a href='B:580 2:20-23'>Col 2:20-23</a>). They wished to introduce all kinds of rules and regulations about what a man might eat and drink and about what days he must observe as festivals and fasts. All the old Jewish regulations--and more--were to be brought back.<p/>(v) They wished to introduce the worship of angels (<a href='B:580 2:18'>Col 2:18</a>). They were teaching that Jesus was only one of many intermediaries between God and man and that all these intermediaries must receive their worship.<p/>It can be seen that here there is a mixture of Gnosticism and Judaism. The intellectual knowledge and the astrology come direct from Gnosticism; the asceticism and the rules and regulations from Judaism. What happened was this. We have seen that the Gnostics believed that all kinds of special knowledge, beyond the gospel, was needed for salvation. There were Jews who joined forces with the Gnostics and declared that the special knowledge required was none other than the knowledge which Judaism could give. This explains why the teaching of the Colossians' false teachers combined the beliefs of Gnosticism with the practices of Judaism.<p/>The one thing certain is that the false teachers taught that Jesus Christ and his teaching and work were not in themselves sufficient for salvation. Let us now take the passage section by section.<p/>Traditions And The Stars (<a href='B:580 2:8-10'>Col 2:8-10</a>)


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 Beware lest there will be anyone who will carry you off as his spoil, by insisting on the necessity of a so-called philosophy, which is, in fact, an empty delusion, a philosophy which has been handed down by human tradition, and which is concerned with the elements of this world and not with Christ; for in him there dwells the fullness of the divine nature; and you have found this fullness in him who is the head of every power and authority.<p/></i><p/>Paul begins by drawing a vivid picture of the false teachers. He speaks of anyone who will carry you off as his spoil. The word is sulagogein (<a href='S:G4812'>G4812</a>) and could be used of a slave-dealer carrying away the people of a conquered nation into slavery. To Paul it was an amazing and a tragic thing that men who had been liberated (<a href='B:580 1:12-14'>Col 1:12-14</a>), could contemplate submitting themselves to a new and disastrous slavery.<p/>These men offer a philosophy which they declare is necessary in addition to the teaching of Christ and the words of the gospel.<p/>(i) It is a philosophy which has been handed down by human tradition. The Gnostics were in the habit of claiming that their special teaching was teaching which had been told by word of mouth by Jesus, sometimes to Mary, sometimes to Matthew, and sometimes to Peter. They did, in fact, say that there were things which Jesus never told the crowd and communicated only to the chosen few. The charge Paul makes against these teachers is that their teaching is a human thing; it has no basis in Scripture. It is a product of the human mind; and not a message of the Word of God. To speak like this is not to drift into fundamentalism or submit to a tyranny of the written word, but to hold that no teaching can be Christian teaching which is at variance with the basic truths of Scripture and with the Word of God.<p/>(ii) It is a philosophy which has to do with the elements of this world. This is a much-discussed phrase of which the meaning is still in doubt. The word for elements is stoicheia (<a href='S:G4747'>G4747</a>), and stoicheia has two meanings.<p/>(a) It means literally things which are set out in a row. It is, for instance, the word for a file of soldiers. But one of its commonest meanings is the letters of the alphabet, no doubt because they form a series which can be set out in a row. Because stoicheia (<a href='S:G4747'>G4747</a>) can mean the letters of the alphabet, it can also very commonly mean elementary instruction in any subject. We still speak of learning the A B C of a subject, when we mean taking the first steps in it. It is possible that this is the meaning here. Paul may be saying, "These false teachers claim that they are giving you knowledge which is very advanced and very profound. In point of fact it is knowledge which is uninstructed and rudimentary because at the best it is knowledge of the human mind. The real knowledge, the real fullness of God, is in Jesus Christ. If you listen to these false teachers, so far from receiving deep spiritual knowledge, you are simply slipping back into rudimentary instruction which you should have left behind long ago."<p/>(b) Stoicheia (<a href='S:G4747'>G4747</a>) has a second meaning. It means the elemental spirits of the world, and especially the spirits of the stars and planets. There are still people today who take astrology seriously. They wear signs of the zodiac charms and read newspaper columns which tell what is forecast for them in the stars. But it is almost impossible for us to realize how dominated the ancient world was by the idea of the influence of the elemental spirits and the stars. Astrology was then, as someone has said, the queen of the sciences. Even men so great as Julius Caesar and Augustus, so cynical as Tiberius, so level-headed as Vespasian would take no step without consulting the stars. Alexander the Great believed implicitly in the influence of the stars. Men and women believed that their whole lives were fixed by them. If a man was born under a fortunate star all was well; if he was born under an unlucky star, he could not look for happiness; if any undertaking was to have a chance of success, the stars must be observed. Men were the slaves of the stars.<p/>There was one possibility of escape. If men knew the right pass-words and the right formulae, they might escape from this fatalistic influence of the stars; and a great part of the secret teaching of Gnosticism and of kindred faiths and philosophies was knowledge which claimed to give the devotee escape from the power of the stars; and in all probability that was what the false teachers of Colosse were offering. They were saying, "Jesus Christ is all very well, he can do much for you; but he cannot enable you to escape from your subjection to the stars. We alone have the secret knowledge which can enable you to do that." Paul, sufficiently the child of his age to believe in these elemental spirits, answers: "You need nothing but Christ to overcome any power in the universe; for in him is nothing less than the fullness of God and he is the head of every power and authority, for he created them."<p/>The Gnostic teachers offered an additional philosophy; Paul insisted on the triumphant adequacy of Christ to overcome any power in any part of the universe. You cannot at one and the same time believe in the power of Christ and the influence of the stars.<p/>The Real And The Unreal Circumcision (<a href='B:580 2:11-12'>Col 2:11-12</a>)


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 In him you have been circumcised with a circumcision not made by man's hands, a circumcision which consists in putting off the whole of that part of you which is dominated by sinful human nature, which you were able to do by the circumcision which belongs to Christ. You were buried with him in the act of baptism and in that act you were raised with him through your faith in the effective working of God, who raised him from the dead.<p/></i><p/>The false teachers were demanding that Gentile Christians should be circumcised for circumcision was the badge of God's chosen people. God, they argued, had said to Abraham, "This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you, and your descendants after you; Every male among you shall be circumcised" (<a href='B:10 17:10'>Gen 17:10</a>).<p/>All through the history of Israel there had been two views of circumcision. There was the view of those who said that in itself it was enough to put a man right with God. It did not matter whether an Israelite was a good man or a bad man; all that mattered was that he was an Israelite and that he had been circumcised.<p/>But the great spiritual leaders of Israel and the great prophets took a very different view. They insisted that circumcision was only the outward mark of a man who was inwardly dedicated to God. They used the very word in an adventurous sense. They talked of uncircumcised lips (<a href='B:20 6:12'>Exo 6:12</a>), of a heart which was circumcised or uncircumcised (<a href='B:30 26:41'>Lev 26:41</a>; <a href='B:330 44:7'>Eze 44:7</a>; <a href='B:330 44:9'>Eze 44:9</a>; <a href='B:50 30:6'>Deu 30:6</a>); of the uncircumcised ear (<a href='B:300 6:10'>Jer 6:10</a>). To them being circumcised did not mean having a certain operation carried out on a man's flesh but having a change effected in his life. Circumcision was, indeed, the badge of a person dedicated to God; but the dedication lay not in the cutting of the flesh but in the excision from his life of everything which was against the will of God.<p/>That was the answer of the prophets centuries before: and that was still Paul's answer to the false teachers. He said to them, "You demand circumcision; but you must remember that circumcision does not mean simply the removal of the foreskin from a man's body; it means the putting off of that whole part of his human nature which sets him at variance with God." Then he went on: "Any priest can circumcise a man's foreskin; only Christ can bring about that spiritual circumcision which means cutting away from a man's life everything which keeps him from being God's obedient child."<p/>Paul goes further. For him this was not theory but fact. "That very act," he said, "has already happened to you in baptism." When we think of his view of baptism we must remember three things. In the early Church, as today in the mission field and even in the Church extension areas, men were coming straight out of heathenism into Christianity. They were knowingly and deliberately leaving one way of life for another; and making in the act of baptism a conscious decision. This was of course, before the days of infant baptism which did not and could not come until the Christian family had become a reality.<p/>Baptism in the time of Paul was three things. It was adult baptism; it was instructed baptism; and, wherever possible, it was baptism by total immersion. Therefore the symbolism of baptism was manifest. As the waters closed over the man's head, it was as if he died; as he rose up again from the water, it was as if he rose to new life. Part of him was dead and gone for ever; he was a new man risen to a new life.<p/>But, it must be noted, that symbolism could become a reality only under one condition. It could become real only when a man believed intensely in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It could only happen when a man believed in the effective working of God which had raised Jesus Christ from the dead and could do the same for him. Baptism for the Christian was in truth a dying and a rising again, because he believed that Christ had died and risen again and that he was sharing the experience of his Lord.<p/>"You speak about circumcision, said Paul. "The only true circumcision is when a man dies and rises with Christ in baptism, in such a way that it is not part of his body which is cut away but his whole sinful self which is destroyed, and he is filled with newness of life and the very holiness of God."<p/>Triumphant Forgiveness (<a href='B:580 2:13-15'>Col 2:13-15</a>)


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 God made you alive with Christ, when you were dead in your sins and were still uncircumcised Gentiles. He forgave you all your sins and wiped out the charge-list which set out all your self-admitted debts, a charge-list which was based on the ordinances of the law and which was in direct opposition to you. He nailed it to his Cross and put it right out of sight. He stripped the powers and authorities of all their power and publicly put them to shame and, through the Cross, led them captive in his triumphal train.<p/></i><p/>Almost all great teachers have thought in pictures; and here Paul uses a series of vivid pictures to show what God in Christ has done for men. The intention is to show that Christ has done all that can be done and all that need be done, and that there is no need to bring in any other intermediaries for the full salvation of men. There are three main pictures here.<p/>(i) Men were dead in their sins. They had no more power than dead men either to overcome sin or to atone for it. Jesus Christ by his work has liberated men both from the power and from the consequences of sin. He has given them a life so new that it can only be said that he has raised them from the dead. Further, it was the old belief that only the Jews were dear to God, but this saving power of Christ has come even to the uncircumcised Gentile. The work of Christ is a work of power, because it put life into dead men; it is a work of grace, because it reached out to those who had no reason to expect the benefits of God.<p/>(ii) But the picture becomes even more vivid. As the King James Version has it, Jesus Christ blotted out the handwriting of ordinances which was against us; as we have translated it, he wiped out the charge-list which set out all our self-admitted debts, a charge-list based on the ordinances of the law. There are two Greek words here on which the whole picture depends.<p/>(a) The word for handwriting or charge-list is cheirographon (<a href='S:G5498'>G5498</a>). It literally means an autograph; but its technical meaning--a meaning which everyone would understand--was a note of hand signed by a debtor acknowledging his indebtedness. It was almost exactly what we call an I.O.U. Men's sins had piled up a vast list of debts to God and it could be said that men definitely acknowledged that debt. More than once the Old Testament shows the children of Israel hearing and accepting the laws of God and calling down curses on themselves should they fail to keep them (<a href='B:20 24:3'>Exo 24:3</a>; <a href='B:50 27:14-26'>Deu 27:14-26</a>). In the New Testament we find the picture of the Gentiles as having, not the written law of God which the Jews had, but the unwritten law in their hearts and the voice of conscience speaking within (<a href='B:520 2:14-15'>Rom 2:14-15</a>). Men were in debt to God because of their sins and they knew it. There was a self-confessed indictment against them, a charge-list which, as it were, they themselves had signed and admitted as accurate.<p/>(b) The word for wiping out is the Greek verb exaleiphein (<a href='S:G1813'>G1813</a>). To understand that word is to understand the amazing mercy of God. The substance on which ancient documents were written was either papyrus, a kind of paper made of the pith of the bulrush, or vellum, a substance made of the skins of animals. Both were fairly expensive and certainly could not be wasted. Ancient ink had no acid in it; it lay on the surface of the paper and did not, as modern ink usually does, bite into it. Sometimes a scribe, to save paper, used papyrus or vellum that had already been written upon. When he did that, he took a sponge and wiped the writing out. Because it was only on the surface of the paper, the ink could be wiped out as if it had never been. God, in his amazing mercy, banished the record of our sins so completely that it was as if it had never been; not a trace remained.<p/>(c) Paul goes on. God took that indictment and nailed it to the Cross of Christ. It used to be said that in the ancient world when a law or an ordinance was cancelled, it was fastened to a board and a nail was driven clean through it. But it is doubtful if that was the case and if that is the picture here. Rather it is this--on the Cross of Christ the indictment that was against us was itself crucified. It was executed and put clean out of the way, so that it might never be seen again. Paul seems to have searched human activity to find a series of pictures which would show how completely God in his mercy destroyed the condemnation that was against us.<p/>Here indeed is grace. And that new era of grace is further underlined in another rather obscure phrase. The charge-list had been based on the ordinances of the law. Before Christ came men were under law and they broke it because no man can perfectly keep it. But now law is banished and grace has come. Man is no longer a criminal who has broken the law and is at the mercy of God's judgment; he is a son who was lost and can now come home to be wrapped around with the grace of God.<p/>(iii) One other great picture flashes on the screen of Paul's mind. Jesus has stripped the powers and authorities and made them his captives. As we have seen, the ancient world believed in all kinds of angels and in all kinds of elemental spirits. Many of these spirits were out to ruin men. It was they who were responsible for demon-possession and the like. They were hostile to men. Jesus conquered them for ever. He stripped them; the word used is the word for stripping the weapons and the armour from a defeated foe. Once and for all Jesus broke their power. He put them to open shame and led them captive in his triumphant train. The picture is that of the triumph of a Roman general. When a Roman general had won a really notable victory, he was allowed to march his victorious armies through the streets of Rome and behind him followed the kings and the leaders and the peoples he had vanquished. They were openly branded as his spoils. Paul thinks of Jesus as a conqueror enjoying a kind of cosmic triumph, and in his triumphal procession are the powers of evil, beaten for ever, for every one to see.<p/>In these vivid pictures Paul sets out the total adequacy of the work of Christ. Sin is forgiven and evil is conquered; what more is necessary? There is nothing that Gnostic knowledge and Gnostic intermediaries can do for men--Christ has done it all already.<p/>Retrogression (<a href='B:580 2:16-23'>Col 2:16-23</a>)<p/>__ <a href='B:580 2:1-23'>Col 2:1-23</a> __


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 Let no one take you to task in matters of food or drink, or with regard to yearly festivals and monthly new moons and weekly sabbaths. These are only the shadow of things to come; the real substance belongs to Christ. Let no one rob you of your prize by walking in ostentatious humility in the worship of angels, making a parade of the things which he has seen, vainly inflated with pride because he is dominated by his sinful human nature and not holding fast to the head, from which the whole body, supplied and held together by the joints and muscles, increases with the increase which God alone can give.<p/>If you died with Christ to the elements of this world, why do you continue to submit yourselves to their rules and regulations, as if you were still living in a world without God? "Handle not! Taste not! Touch not!" are their slogans. These are rules which are humanly taught and humanly imposed, and they are rules which deal with things which are destined for decay as soon as they are used. These things have a reputation for wisdom, with their self-imposed devotion and their flaunting humility and their stern treatment of the body, but they have no kind of value in remedying the indulgences of sinful human nature.<p/></i><p/>This passage has certain basic Gnostic ideas intertwined all through it. In it Paul is warning the Colossians not to adopt certain Gnostic practices, on the grounds that to do so would be not progress but rather retrogression in the faith. Behind it lie four Gnostic practices.<p/>(i) There is Gnostic asceticism (<a href='B:580 2:16'>Col 2:16</a> and <a href='B:580 2:21'>Col 2:21</a>). There is the teaching which involves a whole host of regulations about what can and can not be eaten and drunk. In other words there is a return to all the food laws of the Jews, with their lists of things clean and unclean. As we have seen, the Gnostics considered all matter to be essentially evil. If matter is evil, then the body is evil. If the body is evil, two opposite conclusions may be drawn. (a) If the body is essentially evil, it does not matter what we do with it. Being evil it can be used or abused in any way, and it makes no difference. (b) If the body is evil, it must be kept down; it must be beaten and starved and its every impulse chained down. That is to say, Gnosticism could issue either in complete immorality or in rigid asceticism. It is the rigid asceticism with which Paul is dealing here.<p/>In effect he says, "Have nothing to do with people who identify religion with laws about what you may or may not eat or drink." Jesus himself had said that it made no difference what a man ate or drank (<a href='B:470 15:10-20'>Mat 15:10-20</a>; <a href='B:480 7:14-23'>Mar 7:14-23</a>). Peter had to learn to cease to talk about clean and unclean foods (<a href='B:510 10:1-48'>Act 10:1-48</a>). Paul uses an almost crude phrase which repeats in different words what Jesus had already said. He says, "These things perish as they are used" (<a href='B:580 2:22'>Col 2:22</a>). He means exactly what Jesus did when he said that food and drink are eaten and digested, and then excreted from the body, and flushed away down the drain (<a href='B:470 15:17'>Mat 15:17</a>; <a href='B:480 7:19'>Mar 7:19</a>). Food and drink are so unimportant that they are destined for decay as soon as they are eaten. The Gnostics wished to make religion a thing of regulations about eating and drinking; and there are still those who are more concerned with rules about food than about the charity of the gospel.<p/>(ii) There is the Gnostic and the Jewish observation of days (<a href='B:580 2:16'>Col 2:16</a>). They observed yearly feasts and monthly new moons and weekly sabbaths. They drew out lists of days which specially belonged to God, on which certain things must be done and certain things must not be done. They identified religion with ritual.<p/>Paul's criticism of this stress on days is quite clear and logical. He says, "You have been rescued from all this tyranny of legal rules. Why do you want to enslave yourself all over again? Why do you want to go back to Jewish legalism and abandon Christian freedom?" The spirit which makes Christianity a thing of regulations is by no means dead yet.<p/>(iii) There are the Gnostic special visions. The King James Version in <a href='B:580 2:18'>Col 2:18</a> speaks of the false teacher "intruding into those things which he hath not seen." That is a mistranslation. The correct translation should be "making a parade of the things which he has seen." The Gnostic prided himself upon special visions of secret things which were not open to the eyes of ordinary men and women. No one will deny the visions of the mystics, but there is always danger when a man begins to think that he has attained a height of holiness which enables him to see what common men--as he calls them--cannot see; and the danger is that men will so often see, not what God sends them, but what they want to see.<p/>(iv) There is the worship of angels (<a href='B:580 2:18'>Col 2:18</a>; <a href='B:580 2:20'>Col 2:20</a>). As we have seen, the Jews had a highly-developed doctrine of angels and the Gnostics believed in all kinds of intermediaries. They worshipped these, while the Christian knows that worship must be kept for God and for Jesus Christ.<p/>Paul makes four criticisms of all this.<p/>(i) He says that this kind of thing is only a shadow of truth; the real truth is in Christ (<a href='B:580 2:17'>Col 2:17</a>). That is to say, a religion which is founded on eating and drinking certain kinds of food and drink and abstaining from others, a religion which is founded on Sabbath observance and the like, is only a shadow of real religion; real religion is fellowship with Christ.<p/>(ii) He says that there is such a thing as a false humility (<a href='B:580 2:18'>Col 2:18</a>; <a href='B:580 2:23'>Col 2:23</a>). When they talked of the worship of angels, both the Gnostics and the Jews would have justified it by saying that God is so great and high and holy that we can never have direct access to him and must be content to pray to the angels. But the great truth that Christianity preaches is, in fact, exactly that the way to God is open to the humblest and the simplest person.<p/>(iii) He says that this can lead to sinful pride (<a href='B:580 2:18'>Col 2:18</a>; <a href='B:580 2:23'>Col 2:23</a>). The man who is meticulous in his observance of special days, who keeps all the food laws and who practises ascetic abstinence is in very grave danger of thinking himself specially good and of looking down on other people. And it is a basic truth of Christianity that no man who thinks himself good is really good, least of all the man who thinks himself better than other people.<p/>(iv) He says that this is a return to unchristian slavery instead of Christian freedom (<a href='B:580 2:20'>Col 2:20</a>) and that in any event, it does not free a man from fleshly lusts but only keeps them on the leash (<a href='B:580 2:23'>Col 2:23</a>). Christian freedom comes not from restraining desires by rules and regulations but from the death of evil desires and the springing to life of good desires by virtue of Christ being in the Christian and the Christian in Christ. 


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 If then you were raised with Christ, set your hearts on the things which are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Have a mind all of whose thoughts are fixed on the things which are above, not upon the things on earth. For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Whenever Christ, your life, shall appear, then you too shall appear with him in glory.<p/></i><p/>The point Paul is making here is this. In baptism the Christian dies and rises again. As the waters close over him, it is as if he was buried in death; as he emerges from the waters, it is like being resurrected to a new life. Now, if that is so, the Christian must rise from baptism a different man. Wherein is the difference? It lies in the fact that now the thoughts of the Christian must be set on the things which are above. He can no longer be concerned with the trivial passing things of earth; he must be totally concerned with the eternal verities of heaven.<p/>We must note carefully what Paul means by that. He is certainly not pleading for an other-worldliness in which the Christian withdraws himself from all the work and activities of this world and does nothing but contemplate eternity. Immediately after this Paul goes on to lay down a series of ethical principles which make it quite clear that he expects the Christian to go on with the work of this world and to maintain all its normal relationships. But there will be this difference--from now on the Christian will view everything against the background of eternity and no longer live as if this world was all that mattered.<p/>This will obviously give him a new set of values. Things which the world thought important, he will no longer worry about. Ambitions which dominated the world, will be powerless to touch him. He will go on using the things of the world but he will use them in a new way. He will, for instance, set giving above getting, serving above ruling, forgiving above avenging. The Christian's standard of values will be God's not men's.<p/>And how is this to be accomplished? The life of the Christian is hid with Christ in God. There are at least two vivid pictures here.<p/>(i) We have seen repeatedly that the early Christians regarded baptism as a dying and a rising again. When a man was dead and buried, the Greeks very commonly spoke of him as being hidden in the earth; but the Christian had died a spiritual death in baptism and he is not hidden in the earth, but hidden in Christ. It was the experience of the early Christians that the very act of baptism wrapped a man round with Christ.<p/>(ii) There may well be a word play here which a Greek would recognize at once. The false teachers called their books of so-called wisdom apokruphoi (<a href='S:G614'>G614</a>), the books that were hidden from all except from those who were initiated. Now the word which Paul uses to say that our lives are hidden with Christ in God is part of the verb apokruptein (<a href='S:G613'>G613</a>), from which the adjective apokruphos (<a href='S:G614'>G614</a>) comes. Undoubtedly the one word would suggest the other. It is as if Paul said, "For you the treasures of wisdom are hidden in your secret books; for us Christ is the treasury of wisdom and we are hidden in him."<p/>There is still another thought here. The life of the Christian is hidden with Christ in God. That which is hidden is concealed; the world cannot recognize the Christian. But Paul goes on: "The day is coming when Christ will return in glory and then the Christian, whom no one recognized, will share that glory and it will be plain for all to see." In a sense Paul is saying--and saying truly--that some day the verdicts of eternity will reverse the verdicts of time and the judgments of God will overturn the judgments of men.<p/><b>CHRIST OUR LIFE</b> (<a href='B:580 3:1-4'>Col 3:1-4</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> In <a href='B:580 3:4'>Col 3:4</a> Paul gives to Christ one of the great titles of devotion. He calls him Christ our life. Here is a thought which was very dear to the heart of Paul. When he was writing to the Philippians, he said, "For me to live is Christ" (Php_1:21). Years before, when he was writing to the Galatians, he had said, "It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me" (<a href='B:550 2:20'>Gal 2:20</a>). As Paul saw it, to the Christian Christ is the most important thing in life; more, he is life.<p/>This is the kind of peak of devotion which we can only dimly understand and only haltingly and imperfectly express. Sometimes we say of a man, "Music is his life--Sport is his life--He lives for his work." Such a man finds life and all that it means in music, in sport, in work, as the case may be. For the Christian, Christ is his life.<p/>And here we come back to where this passage started--that is precisely why the Christian sets his mind and heart on the things which are above and not on the things of this world. He judges everything in the light of the Cross and in the light of the love which gave itself for him. In the light of that Cross the world's wealth and ambitions and activities are seen at their true value; and, the Christian is enabled to set his whole heart on the things which are above.<p/><b>THE THINGS WHICH LIE BEHIND</b> (<a href='B:580 3:5-9'>Col 3:5-9</a> <b>a)</b>


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a So, then, put to death these parts of you which are earthly-- fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, the desire to get more than you ought--for this is idol worship; and because of these things the wrath of God comes upon those who are disobedient. It was amongst these things that you once spent your lives; when you lived among them; but now you must divest yourselves of all these things--anger, temper, malice, slander, foul talk which issues from your mouth. Do not lie to one another.<p/></i><p/>Here this letter makes the change that Paul's letters always make; after the theology comes the ethical demand. Paul could think more deeply than any man who ever tried to express the Christian faith; he could travel along uncharted pathways of thought; he could scale the heights of the human mind, where even the best equipped theologian finds it hard to follow him; but always at the end of his letters he turns to the practical consequences of it all. He always ends with an uncompromising and crystal clear statement of the ethical demands of Christianity in the situation in which his friends are at the moment.<p/>Paul begins with a vivid demand. The New Testament never hesitates to demand with a certain violence the complete elimination of everything which is against God. The King James Version translates the first part of this section: "Mortify your members which are upon earth." In seventeenth-century English that was clear enough: but it has lost its force in modern language. Nowadays to mortify the flesh means rather to practise ascetic discipline and self-denial. And that is not enough. What Paul is saying is, "Put to death every part of your self which is against God and keeps you from fulfilling his will." He uses the same line of thought in <a href='B:520 8:13'>Rom 8:13</a>: "If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live." It is exactly the same line of thought as that of Jesus when he demanded that a man should cut off a hand or a foot, or tear out an eye when it was leading him into sin (<a href='B:470 5:29-30'>Mat 5:29-30</a>).<p/>We may put this in more modern language, as C. F. D. Moule expresses it. The Christian must kill self-centredness and regard as dead all private desires and ambitions. There must be in his life a radical transformation of the will and a radical shift of the centre. Everything which would keep him from fully obeying God and fully surrendering to Christ must be surgically excised.<p/>Paul goes on to list some of the things which the Colossians must cut right out of life.<p/>Fornication and uncleanness must go. Chastity was the one completely new virtue which Christianity brought into the world. In the ancient world sexual relationships before marriage and outside marriage were the normal and accepted practice. The sexual appetite was regarded as a thing to be gratified, not to be controlled. That is an attitude which is not unfamiliar today, although often it is supported by specious arguments. In his autobiography, Memory to Memory, Sir Arnold Lunn has a chapter on Cyril Joad, the well-known philosopher, whom he knew well. In his pre-Christian days Joad could write: "Birth control (he meant the use of contraceptives) increases the possibilities of human pleasure. In enabling the pleasures of sex to be tasted without its penalties it has removed the most formidable deterrent not only to regular but to irregular sexual intercourse... The average clergyman is shocked and outraged by the prospect of shameless, harmless and unlimited pleasure which birth control offers to the young, and, if he can stop it, he will." Towards the end of his life Joad came back to religion and returned to the family of the Church; but it was not without a struggle, and it was the insistence of the Christian Church on sexual purity which kept him so long from making the final decision. "It's a big step," he said, "and I can't persuade myself that the very severe attitude to sex which the Church thinks it necessary to adopt is really justified." The Christian ethic insists on chastity, regarding the physical relationship between the sexes as something so precious that indiscriminate use of it in the end spoils it.<p/>There was passion and evil desire. There is a kind of person who is the slave of his passions (palkos) and who is driven by the desire for the wrong things (epithumia, <a href='S:G1939'>G1939</a>).<p/>There is the sin which the Revised Standard Version calls covetousness (pleonexia, <a href='S:G4124'>G4124</a>). Pleonexia is one of the ugliest of sins but while it is quite clear what it means, it is by no means so easy to find a single word to translate it. It comes from two Greek words; the first half of the word is from pleon (<a href='S:G4119'>G4119</a>) which means "more" and the second half is from echein (<a href='S:G2192'>G2192</a>) which means to have. Pleonexia (<a href='S:G4124'>G4124</a>) is basically the desire to have more. The Greeks themselves defined it as insatiate desire and said that you might as easily satisfy it as you might fill with water a bowl with a hole in it. They defined it as the sinful desire for what belongs to others. It has been described as ruthless self-seeking. Its basic idea is the desire for that which a man has no right to have. It is, therefore, a sin with a very wide range. If it is the desire for money, it leads to theft. If it is the desire for prestige, it leads to evil ambition. If it is the desire for power, it leads to sadistic tyranny. If it is the desire for a person, it leads to sexual sin. C. F. D. Moule well describes it as "the opposite of the desire to give."<p/>Such a desire, says Paul, is idolatry. How can that be? The essence of idolatry is the desire to get. A man sets up an idol and worships it because he desires to get something from it. To quote C. F. D. Moule, "idolatry is an attempt to use God for man's purposes, rather than to give oneself to God's service." The essence of idolatry is, in fact, the desire to have more. Or to come at it another way, the man whose life is dominated by the desire to get things has set up things in the place of God--and that precisely is idolatry.<p/>Upon all such things the wrath of God must fall. The wrath of God is simply the rule of the universe that a man will sow what he reaps and that no one ever escapes the consequences of his sin. The wrath of God and the moral order of the universe are one and the same thing.<p/><b>THE THINGS WHICH MUST BE LEFT BEHIND</b> (<a href='B:580 3:5-9'>Col 3:5-9</a> <b>a continued)</b><p/> In <a href='B:580 3:8'>Col 3:8</a> Paul says that there are certain things of which the Colossians must strip themselves. The word he uses is the word for putting off clothes. There is here a picture from the life of the early Christian. When the Christian was baptized, he put off his old clothes when he went down into the water and when he emerged he put on a new and pure white robe. He divested himself of one kind of life and put on another. In this passage Paul speaks of the things of which the Christian must divest himself, and in <a href='B:580 3:12'>Col 3:12</a> he will continue the picture and speak of the things which the Christian must put on. Let us look at these things one by one.<p/>The Christian must put off anger and temper. The two words are orge (<a href='S:G3709'>G3709</a>) and thumos (<a href='S:G2372'>G2372</a>), and the difference between them is this. Thumos (<a href='S:G2372'>G2372</a>) is a blaze of sudden anger which is quickly kindled and just as quickly dies. The Greeks likened it to a fire amongst straw, which quickly blazed and just as quickly burned itself out. Orge (<a href='S:G3709'>G3709</a>) is anger which has become inveterate; it is long-lasting, slow-burning anger, which refuses to be pacified and nurses its wrath to keep it warm. For the Christian the burst of temper and the long-lasting anger are alike forbidden.<p/>There is malice. The word we have so translated is kakia (<a href='S:G2549'>G2549</a>) ; it is a difficult word to translate, for it really means that viciousness of mind from which all the individual vices spring. It is all-pervading evil.<p/>Christians must put off slander and foul talk and they must not lie to one another. The word for slander is blasphemia (<a href='S:G988'>G988</a>), which the King James Version translates blasphemy. Blasphemia is insulting and slanderous speaking in general; when that insulting speech is directed against God, it becomes blasphemy. In this context it is much more likely that what is forbidden is slanderous talk against one's fellow-men. The word we have translated foul talk is aischrologia (<a href='S:G148'>G148</a>) ; it could well mean obscene language. These last three forbidden things have all to do with speech. And when we turn them into positive commands instead of negative prohibitions, we find three laws for Christian speech.<p/>(i) Christian speech must be kind. All slanderous and malicious talking is forbidden. The old advice still stands which says that before we repeat anything about anyone we should ask three questions: "Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it kind?" The New Testament is unsparing in its condemnation of the gossiping tongues which poison truth.<p/>(ii) Christian speech must be pure. There can never have been a time in history when so much filthy language is used as today. And the tragedy is that many people have become so habituated to unclean talk that they are unaware that they are using it. The Christian should never forget that he will give account for every idle word he speaks.<p/>(iii) Christian speech must be true. Dr. Johnson believed that there are far more falsehoods told unaware than deliberately; and he believed that a child should be checked when he deviates in the smallest detail from the truth. It is easy to distort the truth; an alteration in the tone of voice or an eloquent look will do it; and there are silences which can be as false and misleading as any words.<p/>Christian speech must be kind and pure and honest to all men and in all places.<p/><b>THE UNIVERSALITY OF CHRISTIANITY</b> (<a href='B:580 3:9'>Col 3:9</a> <b>b-13)</b><p/><i> 3:9b-13 Strip off the old self with all its activities. Put on the new self, which is ever freshly renewed until it reaches fullness of knowledge, in the likeness of its creator. In it there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free man, but Christ is all in all. So then, as the chosen of God, dedicated and beloved, clothe yourself with a heart of pity, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience. Bear with one another, and, if anyone has a ground of complaint against someone else, forgive each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive each other.<p/></i><p/>When a man becomes a Christian, there ought to be a complete change in his personality. He puts off his old self and puts on a new self, just as the candidate for baptism puts off his old clothes and puts on the new white robe. We very often evade the truth on which the New Testament insists, that a Christianity which does not change a man is most imperfect. Further, this change is progressive. This new creation is a continual renewal. It makes a man grow continually in grace and knowledge until he reaches that which he was meant to be--manhood in the image of God.<p/>One of the great effects of Christianity is that it destroys the barriers. In it there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free man. The ancient world was full of barriers. The Greek looked down on the barbarian; and to the Greek any man who did not speak Greek was a barbarian, which literally means a man who says "bar-bar." The Greek was the aristocrat of the ancient world and he knew it. The Jew looked down on every other nation. He belonged to God's chosen people and the other nations were fit only to be fuel for the fires of hell. The Scythian was notorious as the lowest of the barbarians; more barbarian than the barbarians, the Greeks called him; little short of being a wild beast, Josephus calls him. He was proverbially the savage, who terrorized the civilized world with his bestial atrocities. The slave was not even classified in ancient law as a human being; he was merely a living tool, with no rights of his own. His master could thrash or brand or maim or even kill him at his caprice; he had not even the right of marriage. There could be no fellowship in the ancient world between a slave and a free man.<p/>In Christ all these barriers were broken down. J. B. Lightfoot reminds us that one of the greatest tributes paid to Christianity was paid not by a theologian but by a master linguist. Max Miller was one of the great experts of the science of language. In the ancient world no one was interested in foreign languages, apart from Greek. The Greeks were the scholars and they would never have deigned to study a barbarian tongue. The science of language is a new science and the desire to know other languages a new desire. Max Muller wrote: "Not till that word barbarian was struck out of the dictionary of mankind, and replaced by brother, not till the right of all nations of the world to be classed as members of one genus or kind was recognized, can we look even for the first beginnings of our science of language... This change was effected by Christianity." It was Christianity which drew men together sufficiently to make them wish to know each other's languages.<p/>T. K. Abbott points out how this passage shows in summary fashion the barriers which Christianity destroyed.<p/>(i) It destroyed the barriers which came from birth and nationality. Different nations, who either despised or hated each other, were drawn into the one family of the Christian Church. Men of different nationalities, who would have leaped at each other's throats, sat in peace beside each other at the Table of the Lord.<p/>(ii) It destroyed the barriers which came from ceremonial and ritual. Circumcised and uncircumcised were drawn together in the one fellowship. To a Jew a man of any other nation was unclean; when he became a Christian, every man of every nation became a brother.<p/>(iii) It destroyed the barriers between the cultured and the uncultured. The Scythian was the ignorant barbarian of the ancient world; the Greek was the aristocrat of learning. The uncultured and the cultured came together in the Christian Church. The greatest scholar in the world and the simplest son of toil can sit in perfect fellowship in the Church of Christ.<p/>(iv) It destroyed the barrier between class and class. The slave and the free man came together in the Church. More than that, in the Early Church it could, and did, happen that the slave was the leader of the Church and the master the humble member. In the presence of God the social distinctions of the world become irrelevant.<p/><b>THE GARMENTS OF CHRISTIAN GRACE</b> (<a href='B:580 3:9'>Col 3:9</a> <b>b-13 continued)</b><p/> Paul moves on to give his list of the great graces with which the Colossians must clothe themselves. Before we study the list in detail, we must note two very significant things.<p/>(i) Paul begins by addressing the Colossians as chosen of God, dedicated and beloved. The significant thing is that every one of these three words originally belonged, as it were, to the Jews. They were the chosen people; they were the dedicated nation, they were the beloved of God. Paul takes these three precious words which had once been the possession of Israel and gives them to the Gentiles. Thereby he shows that God's love and grace have gone out to the ends of the earth, and that there is no "most favoured nation" clause in his economy.<p/>(ii) It is most significant to note that every one of the graces listed has to do with personal relationships between man and man. There is no mention of virtues like efficiency or cleverness, not even of diligence or industry--not that these things are unimportant. But the great basic Christian virtues are those which govern human relationships. Christianity is community. It has on its divine side the amazing gift of peace with God and on its human side the triumphant solution of the problem of living together.<p/>Paul begins with a heart of pity. If there was one thing the ancient world needed it was mercy. The sufferings of animals were nothing to it. The maimed and the sickly went to the wall. There was no provision for the aged. The treatment of the idiot and the simple-minded was unfeeling. Christianity brought mercy into this world. It is not too much to say that everything that has been done for the aged, the sick, the weak in body and in mind, the animal, the child, the woman has been done under the inspiration of Christianity.<p/>There is kindness (chrestotes, <a href='S:G5544'>G5544</a>). Trench calls this a lovely word for a lovely quality. The ancient writers defined chrestotes (<a href='S:G5544'>G5544</a>) as the virtue of the man whose neighbours good is as dear to him as his own. Josephus uses it as a description of Isaac, the man who dug wells and gave them to others because he would not fight about them (<a href='B:10 26:17-25'>Gen 26:17-25</a>). It is used of wine which has grown mellow with age and lost its harshness. It is the word used when Jesus said, "My yoke is easy." (<a href='B:470 11:30'>Mat 11:30</a>). Goodness by itself can be stern; but chrestotes (<a href='S:G5544'>G5544</a>) is the goodness which is kind, that type of goodness which Jesus used to the sinning woman who anointed his feet (<a href='B:490 7:37-50'>Luk 7:37-50</a>). No doubt Simon the Pharisee was a good man; but Jesus was more than good, he was chrestos (<a href='S:G5543'>G5543</a>). The Rheims version translates it benignity. The Christian is marked by a goodness which is a kindly thing.<p/>There is humility (tapeinophrosune, <a href='S:G5012'>G5012</a>). It has often been said that humility was a virtue created by Christianity. In classical Greek there is no word for humility which has, not some tinge of servility; but Christian humility is not a cringing thing. It is based on two things. First, on the divine side, it is based on the awareness of the creatureliness of humanity. God is the Creator, man the creature, and in the presence of the Creator the creature cannot feel anything else but humility. Second, on the human side, it is based on the belief that all men are the sons of God; and there is no room for arrogance when we are living among men and women who are all of royal lineage.<p/>There is gentleness (praotes, <a href='S:G4236'>G4236</a>). Long ago Aristotle had defined praotes as the happy mean between too much and too little anger. The man who has praotes (<a href='S:G4236'>G4236</a>) is the man who is so self-controlled, because he is God-controlled, that he is always angry at the right time and never angry at the wrong time. He has at one and the same time the strength and the sweetness of true gentleness.<p/>There is patience (makrothumia, <a href='S:G3115'>G3115</a>). This is the spirit which never loses its patience with its fellow-men. Their foolishness and their unteachability never drive it to cynicism or despair; their insults and their ill-treatment never drive it to bitterness or wrath. Human patience is a reflection of the divine patience which bears with all our sinning and never casts us off.<p/>There is the forbearing and the forgiving spirit. The Christian forbears and forgives; and he does so because a forgiven man must always be forgiving. As God forgave him, so he must forgive others, for only the forgiving can be forgiven.<p/><b>THE PERFECT BOND</b> (<a href='B:580 3:14-17'>Col 3:14-17</a>)


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 On top of all these things, clothe yourselves with love which is the perfect bond; and let the peace of God be the decider of all things within your hearts, for it is to that peace you were called, so that you might be united in one body. May the word of Christ dwell richly in you with all wisdom. Continue to teach and to admonish each other with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you may be doing in word or in deed, do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.<p/></i><p/>To the virtues and the graces Paul adds one more--what he calls the perfect bond of love. Love is the binding power which holds the whole Christian body together. The tendency of any body of people is sooner or later to fly apart; love is the one bond which will hold them together in unbreakable fellowship.<p/>Then Paul uses a vivid picture. "Let the peace of God be the decider of all things within your heart." Literally what he says is, "Let the peace of God be the umpire in your heart." He uses a verb from the athletic arena; it is the word that is used of the umpire who settled things in any matter of dispute. If the peace of Jesus Christ is the umpire in any man's heart, then, when feelings clash and we are pulled in two directions at the same time, the decision of Christ will keep us in the way of love and the Church will remain the one body it is meant to be. The way to right action is to appoint Jesus Christ as the arbiter between the conflicting emotions in our hearts; and if we accept his decisions, we cannot go wrong.<p/>It is interesting to see that from the beginning the Church was a singing Church. It inherited that from the Jews, for Philo tells us that often they would spend the whole night in hymns and songs. One of the earliest descriptions of a Church service we possess is that of Pliny, the Roman governor of Bithynia, who sent a report of the activities of the Christians to Trajan, the Roman Emperor, in which he said, "They meet at dawn to sing a hymn to Christ as God." The gratitude of the Church has always gone up to God in praise and song.<p/>Finally, Paul gives the great principle for living that everything we do or say should be done and said in the name of Jesus. One of the best tests of any action is: "Can we do it, calling upon the name of Jesus? Can we do it, asking for his help?" One of the best tests of any word is: "Can we speak it and in the same breath name the name of Jesus? Can we speak it, remembering that he will hear?" If a man brings every word and deed to the test of the presence of Jesus Christ, he will not go wrong.<p/><b>THE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE CHRISTIAN</b> (<a href='B:580 3:18-25'>Col 3:18-25</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:580 4:1'>Col 4:1</a>)


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 Wives, be submissive to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not treat them harshly.<p/>Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing in the Lord. Fathers, do not irritate your children, that they may not lose heart.<p/>Slaves, obey in all things those who are your human masters, not only when you are watched, like those whose only desire is to please men, but in sincerity of heart, reverencing the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it heartily, as if you were doing it for the Lord and not for men; and never forget that you will receive from the Lord your just recompense, even your share in the inheritance. Show yourselves the slaves of the Lord Christ. He who does wrong will be paid back for the wrong that he has done, and there is no respect of persons.<p/>Masters, on your part provide for your slaves treatment which is just and equitable, and remember that you too have a master in heaven.<p/></i><p/>Here the ethical part of the letter becomes more and more practical. Paul turns to the working out of Christianity in the everyday relationships of life and living. Before we begin to study the passage in some detail, we must note two great general principles which lie behind it and determine all its demands.<p/>(i) The Christian ethic is an ethic of reciprocal obligation. It is never an ethic on which all the duties are on one side. As Paul saw it, husbands have as great an obligation as wives; parents have just as binding a duty as children; masters have their responsibilities as much as slaves.<p/>This was an entirely new thing. Let us take the cases one by one and look at them in the light of this new principle.<p/>Under Jewish law a woman was a thing, the possession of her husband, just as much as his house or his flocks or his material goods. She had no legal rights whatever. For instance, under Jewish law, a husband could divorce his wife for any cause, while a wife had no rights whatever in the initiation of divorce; and the only grounds on which a divorce might be awarded her were if her husband developed leprosy, became an apostate or ravished a virgin. In Greek society a respectable woman lived a life of entire seclusion. She never appeared on the streets alone, not even to go marketing. She lived in the women's apartments and did not join her menfolk even for meals. From her there was demanded complete servitude and chastity; but her husband could go out as much as he chose and could enter into as many relationships outside marriage as he liked without incurring any stigma. Under both Jewish and Greek laws and custom all the privileges belonged to the husband and all the duties to the wife.<p/>In the ancient world children were very much under the domination of their parents. The supreme example was the Roman Patria Potestas, the law of the father's power. Under it a parent could do anything he liked with his child. He could sell him into slavery; he could make him work like a labourer on his farm; he had even the right to condemn his child to death and to carry out the execution. All the privileges and rights belonged to the parent and all the duties to the child.<p/>Most of all this was the case in slavery. The slave was a thing in the eyes of the law. There was no such thing as a code of working conditions. When the slave was past his work, he could be thrown out to die. He had not even the right to marry, and if he cohabited and there was a child, the child belonged to the master, just as the lambs of the flock belonged to the shepherd. Once again all the rights belonged to the master and all the duties to the slave.<p/>The Christian ethic is one of mutual obligation, in which the rights and the obligations rest with every man. It is an ethic of mutual responsibility; and, therefore, it becomes an ethic where the thought of privilege and rights falls into the background and where the thought of duty and obligation becomes paramount. The whole direction of the Christian ethic is not to ask: "What do others owe to me?" but, "What do I owe to others?"<p/>(ii) The really new thing about the Christian ethic of personal relationships is that all relationships are in the Lord. The whole of the Christian life is lived in Christ. In any home the tone of personal relationships must be dictated by the awareness that Jesus Christ is an unseen but ever-present guest. In any parent-child relationship the dominating thought must be the Fatherhood of God; and we must try to treat our children as God treats his sons and daughters. The thing which settles any master and servant relationship is that both are servants of the one Master, Jesus Christ. The new thing about personal relationships in Christianity is that Jesus Christ is introduced into them all.<p/><b>THE MUTUAL OBLIGATION</b> (<a href='B:580 3:18-25'>Col 3:18-25</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:580 4:1'>Col 4:1</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Let us look briefly at each of these three spheres of human relationships.<p/>(i) The wife is to be submissive to her husband; but the husband is to love his wife and to treat her with all kindness. The practical effect of the marriage laws and customs of ancient times was that the husband became an unquestioned dictator and the wife little more than a servant to bring up his children and to minister to his needs. The fundamental effect of this Christian teaching is that marriage becomes a partnership. It becomes something which is entered into not merely for the convenience of the husband, but in order that both husband and wife may find a new joy and a new completeness in each other. Any marriage in which everything is done for the convenience of one of the partners and where the other exists simply to gratify the needs and desires of the first, is not a Christian marriage.<p/>(ii) The Christian ethic lays down the duty of the child to respect the parental relationship. But there is always a problem in the relationship of parent and child. If the parent is too easy-going, the child will grow up indisciplined and unfit to face life. But there is a contrary danger. The more conscientious a parent is, the more he is likely always to be correcting and rebuking the child. Simply because he wishes the child to do well, he is always on his top.<p/>We remember, for instance, the tragic question of Mary Lamb, whose mind was ultimately unhinged: "Why is it that I never seem to be able to do anything to please my mother?" We remember the poignant statement of John Newton: "I know that my father loved me--but he did not seem to wish me to see it." There is a certain kind of constant criticism which is the product of misguided love.<p/>The danger of all this is that the child may become discouraged. Bengel speaks of "the plague of youth, a broken spirit (Fractus animus pestis iuventutis)." It is one of the tragic facts of religious history that Luther's father was so stern to him that Luther all his days found it difficult to pray: "Our Father." The word father in his mind stood for nothing but severity. The duty of the parent is discipline, but it is also encouragement. Luther himself said, "Spare the rod and spoil the child. It is true. But beside the rod keep an apple to give him when he does well."<p/>Sir Arnold Lunn, in Memory to Memory, quotes an incident about Field-Marshal Montgomery from a book by M. E. Clifton James. Montgomery was famous as a disciplinarian--but there was another side to him. Clifton James was his official "double" and was studying him during a rehearsal for D-Day. "Within a few yards of where I was standing, a very young soldier, still looking sea-sick from his voyage, came struggling along gamely trying to keep up with his comrades in front. I could imagine that, feeling as he did, his rifle and equipment must have been like a ton weight. His heavy boots dragged in the sand, but I could see that he was fighting hard to conceal his distress. Just when he got level with us he tripped up and fell flat on his face. Half sobbing, he heaved himself up and began to march off dazedly in the wrong direction. Monty went straight up to him and with a quick, friendly smile turned him round. 'This way, sonny. You're doing well--very well. But don't lose touch with the chap in front of you.' When the youngster realized who it was that had given him friendly help, his expression of dumb adoration was a study." It was just because Montgomery combined discipline and encouragement that a private in the Eighth Army felt himself as good as a colonel in any other army.<p/>The better a parent is the more he must avoid the danger of discouraging his child, for he must give discipline and encouragement in equal parts.<p/><b>THE CHRISTIAN WORKMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN MASTER</b> (<a href='B:580 3:18-25'>Col 3:18-25</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:580 4:1'>Col 4:1</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (iii) Paul then turns to the greatest problem of all--the relationship between slave and master. It will be noted that this section is far longer than the other two; and its length may well be due to long talks which Paul had with the runaway slave, Onesimus, whom later he was to send back to his master Philemon.<p/>Paul says things which must have amazed both sides.<p/>He insists that the slave must be a conscientious workman. He is in effect saying that his Christianity must make him a better and more efficient slave. Christianity never in this world offers escape from hard work; it makes a man able to work still harder. Nor does it offer a man escape from difficult situations; it enables him to meet these situations better.<p/>The slave must not be content with eye-service; he must not work only when the overseer's eye is upon him. He must not be the kind of servant, who, as C. F. D. Moule puts it, does not dust behind the ornaments or sweep below the wardrobe. He must remember that he will receive his inheritance. Here was an amazing thing. Under Roman law a slave could not possess any property whatsoever and here he is being promised nothing less than the inheritance of God. He must remember that the time will come when the balance is adjusted and evil-doing will find its punishment and faithful diligence its reward.<p/>The master must treat the slave not like a thing, but like a person, with justice and with the equity which goes beyond justice.<p/>How is it to be done? The answer is important, for in it there is the whole Christian doctrine of work.<p/>The workman must do everything as if he was doing it for Christ. We do not work for pay or for ambition or to satisfy an earthly master; we work so that we can take every task and offer it to Christ. All work is done for God so that his world may go on and his men and women have the things they need for life and living.<p/>The master must remember that he too has a Master--Christ in heaven. He is answerable to God, just as his workmen are answerable to him. No master can say, "This is my business and I will do what I like with it." He must say, "This is God's business. He has put me in charge of it. I am responsible to him." The Christian doctrine of work is that master and man alike are working for God, and that, therefore, the real rewards of work are not assessable in earthly coin, but will some day be given--or withheld--by God. 


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<b>THE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS OF THE CHRISTIAN</b> (<a href='B:580 3:18-25'>Col 3:18-25</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:580 4:1'>Col 4:1</a>)<p/><i> 4:1 Wives, be submissive to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not treat them harshly.<p/>Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is well-pleasing in the Lord. Fathers, do not irritate your children, that they may not lose heart.<p/>Slaves, obey in all things those who are your human masters, not only when you are watched, like those whose only desire is to please men, but in sincerity of heart, reverencing the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it heartily, as if you were doing it for the Lord and not for men; and never forget that you will receive from the Lord your just recompense, even your share in the inheritance. Show yourselves the slaves of the Lord Christ. He who does wrong will be paid back for the wrong that he has done, and there is no respect of persons.<p/>Masters, on your part provide for your slaves treatment which is just and equitable, and remember that you too have a master in heaven.<p/></i><p/>Here the ethical part of the letter becomes more and more practical. Paul turns to the working out of Christianity in the everyday relationships of life and living. Before we begin to study the passage in some detail, we must note two great general principles which lie behind it and determine all its demands.<p/>(i) The Christian ethic is an ethic of reciprocal obligation. It is never an ethic on which all the duties are on one side. As Paul saw it, husbands have as great an obligation as wives; parents have just as binding a duty as children; masters have their responsibilities as much as slaves.<p/>This was an entirely new thing. Let us take the cases one by one and look at them in the light of this new principle.<p/>Under Jewish law a woman was a thing, the possession of her husband, just as much as his house or his flocks or his material goods. She had no legal rights whatever. For instance, under Jewish law, a husband could divorce his wife for any cause, while a wife had no rights whatever in the initiation of divorce; and the only grounds on which a divorce might be awarded her were if her husband developed leprosy, became an apostate or ravished a virgin. In Greek society a respectable woman lived a life of entire seclusion. She never appeared on the streets alone, not even to go marketing. She lived in the women's apartments and did not join her menfolk even for meals. From her there was demanded complete servitude and chastity; but her husband could go out as much as he chose and could enter into as many relationships outside marriage as he liked without incurring any stigma. Under both Jewish and Greek laws and custom all the privileges belonged to the husband and all the duties to the wife.<p/>In the ancient world children were very much under the domination of their parents. The supreme example was the Roman Patria Potestas, the law of the father's power. Under it a parent could do anything he liked with his child. He could sell him into slavery; he could make him work like a labourer on his farm; he had even the right to condemn his child to death and to carry out the execution. All the privileges and rights belonged to the parent and all the duties to the child.<p/>Most of all this was the case in slavery. The slave was a thing in the eyes of the law. There was no such thing as a code of working conditions. When the slave was past his work, he could be thrown out to die. He had not even the right to marry, and if he cohabited and there was a child, the child belonged to the master, just as the lambs of the flock belonged to the shepherd. Once again all the rights belonged to the master and all the duties to the slave.<p/>The Christian ethic is one of mutual obligation, in which the rights and the obligations rest with every man. It is an ethic of mutual responsibility; and, therefore, it becomes an ethic where the thought of privilege and rights falls into the background and where the thought of duty and obligation becomes paramount. The whole direction of the Christian ethic is not to ask: "What do others owe to me?" but, "What do I owe to others?"<p/>(ii) The really new thing about the Christian ethic of personal relationships is that all relationships are in the Lord. The whole of the Christian life is lived in Christ. In any home the tone of personal relationships must be dictated by the awareness that Jesus Christ is an unseen but ever-present guest. In any parent-child relationship the dominating thought must be the Fatherhood of God; and we must try to treat our children as God treats his sons and daughters. The thing which settles any master and servant relationship is that both are servants of the one Master, Jesus Christ. The new thing about personal relationships in Christianity is that Jesus Christ is introduced into them all.<p/><b>THE MUTUAL OBLIGATION</b> (<a href='B:580 3:18-25'>Col 3:18-25</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:580 4:1'>Col 4:1</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Let us look briefly at each of these three spheres of human relationships.<p/>(i) The wife is to be submissive to her husband; but the husband is to love his wife and to treat her with all kindness. The practical effect of the marriage laws and customs of ancient times was that the husband became an unquestioned dictator and the wife little more than a servant to bring up his children and to minister to his needs. The fundamental effect of this Christian teaching is that marriage becomes a partnership. It becomes something which is entered into not merely for the convenience of the husband, but in order that both husband and wife may find a new joy and a new completeness in each other. Any marriage in which everything is done for the convenience of one of the partners and where the other exists simply to gratify the needs and desires of the first, is not a Christian marriage.<p/>(ii) The Christian ethic lays down the duty of the child to respect the parental relationship. But there is always a problem in the relationship of parent and child. If the parent is too easy-going, the child will grow up indisciplined and unfit to face life. But there is a contrary danger. The more conscientious a parent is, the more he is likely always to be correcting and rebuking the child. Simply because he wishes the child to do well, he is always on his top.<p/>We remember, for instance, the tragic question of Mary Lamb, whose mind was ultimately unhinged: "Why is it that I never seem to be able to do anything to please my mother?" We remember the poignant statement of John Newton: "I know that my father loved me--but he did not seem to wish me to see it." There is a certain kind of constant criticism which is the product of misguided love.<p/>The danger of all this is that the child may become discouraged. Bengel speaks of "the plague of youth, a broken spirit (Fractus animus pestis iuventutis)." It is one of the tragic facts of religious history that Luther's father was so stern to him that Luther all his days found it difficult to pray: "Our Father." The word father in his mind stood for nothing but severity. The duty of the parent is discipline, but it is also encouragement. Luther himself said, "Spare the rod and spoil the child. It is true. But beside the rod keep an apple to give him when he does well."<p/>Sir Arnold Lunn, in Memory to Memory, quotes an incident about Field-Marshal Montgomery from a book by M. E. Clifton James. Montgomery was famous as a disciplinarian--but there was another side to him. Clifton James was his official "double" and was studying him during a rehearsal for D-Day. "Within a few yards of where I was standing, a very young soldier, still looking sea-sick from his voyage, came struggling along gamely trying to keep up with his comrades in front. I could imagine that, feeling as he did, his rifle and equipment must have been like a ton weight. His heavy boots dragged in the sand, but I could see that he was fighting hard to conceal his distress. Just when he got level with us he tripped up and fell flat on his face. Half sobbing, he heaved himself up and began to march off dazedly in the wrong direction. Monty went straight up to him and with a quick, friendly smile turned him round. 'This way, sonny. You're doing well--very well. But don't lose touch with the chap in front of you.' When the youngster realized who it was that had given him friendly help, his expression of dumb adoration was a study." It was just because Montgomery combined discipline and encouragement that a private in the Eighth Army felt himself as good as a colonel in any other army.<p/>The better a parent is the more he must avoid the danger of discouraging his child, for he must give discipline and encouragement in equal parts.<p/><b>THE CHRISTIAN WORKMAN AND THE CHRISTIAN MASTER</b> (<a href='B:580 3:18-25'>Col 3:18-25</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:580 4:1'>Col 4:1</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (iii) Paul then turns to the greatest problem of all--the relationship between slave and master. It will be noted that this section is far longer than the other two; and its length may well be due to long talks which Paul had with the runaway slave, Onesimus, whom later he was to send back to his master Philemon.<p/>Paul says things which must have amazed both sides.<p/>He insists that the slave must be a conscientious workman. He is in effect saying that his Christianity must make him a better and more efficient slave. Christianity never in this world offers escape from hard work; it makes a man able to work still harder. Nor does it offer a man escape from difficult situations; it enables him to meet these situations better.<p/>The slave must not be content with eye-service; he must not work only when the overseer's eye is upon him. He must not be the kind of servant, who, as C. F. D. Moule puts it, does not dust behind the ornaments or sweep below the wardrobe. He must remember that he will receive his inheritance. Here was an amazing thing. Under Roman law a slave could not possess any property whatsoever and here he is being promised nothing less than the inheritance of God. He must remember that the time will come when the balance is adjusted and evil-doing will find its punishment and faithful diligence its reward.<p/>The master must treat the slave not like a thing, but like a person, with justice and with the equity which goes beyond justice.<p/>How is it to be done? The answer is important, for in it there is the whole Christian doctrine of work.<p/>The workman must do everything as if he was doing it for Christ. We do not work for pay or for ambition or to satisfy an earthly master; we work so that we can take every task and offer it to Christ. All work is done for God so that his world may go on and his men and women have the things they need for life and living.<p/>The master must remember that he too has a Master--Christ in heaven. He is answerable to God, just as his workmen are answerable to him. No master can say, "This is my business and I will do what I like with it." He must say, "This is God's business. He has put me in charge of it. I am responsible to him." The Christian doctrine of work is that master and man alike are working for God, and that, therefore, the real rewards of work are not assessable in earthly coin, but will some day be given--or withheld--by God.<p/><b>THE CHRISTIAN'S PRAYER</b> (<a href='B:580 4:2-4'>Col 4:2-4</a>)


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 Persevere in prayer. Be vigilant in your prayer, and let thanksgiving always be a part of it. And at the same time pray for us, that God may open for us a door for the word, that we may speak the secret of Christ now revealed to his own people, that secret for which I am in bonds, that I may make it manifest to all, as I ought to speak.<p/></i><p/>Paul would never write a letter without urging the duty and the privilege of prayer on his friends.<p/>He tells them to persevere in prayer. Even for the best of us, there come times when prayer seems to be unavailing and to penetrate no farther than the walls of the room in which we pray. At such a time the remedy is not to stop but to go on praying; for in the man who prays spiritual dryness cannot last.<p/>He tells them to be vigilant in prayer. Literally the Greek means to be wakeful. The phrase could well mean that Paul is telling them not to go to sleep when they pray. Maybe he was thinking of the time on the Mount of Transfiguration when the disciples fell asleep and only when they were awake again saw the glory (<a href='B:490 9:32'>Luk 9:32</a>). Or maybe he was thinking of that time in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus prayed and his disciples slept (<a href='B:470 26:40'>Mat 26:40</a>). It is true that at the end of a hard day sleep often comes upon us when we try to pray. And even oftener there is in our prayers a kind of tiredness. At such a time we should not try to be long: God will understand the single sentence uttered in the manner of a child too tired to stay awake.<p/>Paul asks their prayers for himself. We must note carefully exactly what it is for which Paul asks. He asks their prayer not so much for himself as for his work. There were many things for which Paul might have asked them to pray--release from prison, a successful outcome to his coming trial, a little rest and peace at the last. But he asks them to pray only that there may be given to him strength and opportunity to do the work which God had sent him into the world to do. When we pray for ourselves and for others, we should not ask release from any task, but rather strength to complete the task which has been given us to do. Prayer should always be for power and seldom for release; for not release but conquest must be the keynote of the Christian life.<p/><b>THE CHRISTIAN AND THE WORLD</b> (<a href='B:580 4:5-6'>Col 4:5-6</a>)


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 Behave yourselves wisely to those who are outside the Church. Buy up every possible opportunity. Let your speech always be with gracious charm, seasoned with the salt of wit, so that you will know the right answer to give in every case.<p/></i><p/>Here are three brief instructions for the life of the Christian in the world.<p/>(i) The Christian must behave himself with wisdom and with tact towards those who are outside the Church. He must of necessity be a missionary; but he must know when and when not to speak to others about his religion and theirs. He must never give the impression of superiority and of censorious criticism. Few people have ever been argued into Christianity. The Christian, therefore, must remember that it is not so much by his words as by his life that he will attract people to, or repel them from, Christianity. On the Christian there is laid the great responsibility of showing men Christ in his daily life.<p/>(ii) The Christian must be a man on the outlook for opportunity. He must buy up every opportunity possible to work for Christ and to serve men. Daily life and work are continually offering men opportunities to witness for Christ and to influence people for him--but there are so many who avoid the opportunities instead of embracing them. The Church is constantly offering its members the opportunity to teach, to sing, to visit, to work for the good of the Christian congregation--and there are so many who deliberately refuse these opportunities instead of accepting them. The Christian should always be on the outlook for the opportunity to serve Christ and his fellow-men.<p/>(iii) The Christian must have charm and wit in his speech so that he may know how to give the right answer in every case. Here is an interesting injunction. It is all too true that Christianity in the minds of many is connected with a kind of sanctimonious dullness and an outlook in which laughter is almost a heresy. As C. F. D. Moule says, this is "a warning not to confuse loyal godliness with graceless insipidity." The Christian must commend his message with the charm and the wit which were in Jesus himself. There is too much of the Christianity which stodgily depresses a man and too little of the Christianity which scintillates with life.<p/><b>FAITHFUL COMPANIONS</b> (<a href='B:580 4:7-11'>Col 4:7-11</a>)


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 Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful servant and my fellow-slave in Christ, will inform you all about how things are going with me. I send him to you for this very purpose, that you may know about what is happening to me and that he may encourage your hearts. Along with him I send Onesimus, the faithful and beloved brother, who is one of yourselves. They will inform you about all that has been happening here. Aristarchus, my fellow-prisoner, greets you, and Mark, Barnabas' cousin. (I have given you instructions about him; if he comes to you, give him a welcome.) Jesus, who is called Justus, sends you greetings. These were all converts from the Jewish faith. These alone are my fellow-workers in the work of the Kingdom, men who have been a comfort to me.<p/></i><p/>The list of names at the end of this chapter is a list of heroes of the faith. We must remember the circumstances. Paul was in prison awaiting trial and it is always dangerous to be a prisoner's friend, for it is so easy to become involved in the same fate as the prisoner himself It took courage to visit Paul in his imprisonment and to show that one was on the same side. Let us collect what we know of these men.<p/>There was Tychicus. He came from the Roman province of Asia and was most likely the representative of his Church to carry its offering to the poor Christians of Jerusalem (<a href='B:510 20:4'>Act 20:4</a>). To him also was entrusted the duty of bearing to its various destinations the letter we know as the letter to the Ephesians (<a href='B:560 6:21'>Eph 6:21</a>). There is one rather interesting thing here. Paul writes that Tychicus will tell them all about how things are going with him. This shows how much was left to word of mouth and never set down in Paul's letters at all. In the nature of things the letters could not be very tong and they dealt with the problems of faith and conduct which were threatening the Churches. The personal details were left to the bearer of the letter to tell. Tychicus, then, we can describe as the personal envoy of Paul.<p/>There was Onesimus. Paul's way of mentioning him is full of lovely courtesy. Onesimus was the runaway slave who had somehow reached Rome and Paul was sending him back to his master Philemon. But he does not call him a runaway slave; he calls him a faithful and beloved brother. When Paul had anything to say about a man, he always said the best that he could.<p/>There was Aristarchus. He was a Macedonian from Thessalonica (<a href='B:510 20:4'>Act 20:4</a>). We get only fleeting glimpses of Aristarchus but from these glimpses one thing emerges--he was clearly a good man to have about in a tight corner. He was there when the people of Ephesus rioted in the Temple of Diana and was so much in the forefront that he was captured by the mob (<a href='B:510 19:29'>Act 19:29</a>). He was there when Paul set sail a prisoner for Rome (<a href='B:510 27:2'>Act 27:2</a>). It may well be that he had actually enrolled himself as Paul's slave in order that he might be allowed to make the last journey with him. And now he is here in Rome, Paul's fellow-prisoner. Clearly Aristarchus was a man who was always on the spot when things were at their grimmest. Whenever Paul was in bad trouble Aristarchus was there. The glimpses we have are enough to indicate a really good companion.<p/>There was Mark. Of all the characters in the Early Church he had had the most surprising career. He was so close a friend that Peter could call him his son (<a href='B:670 5:13'>1Pe 5:13</a>); and we know that when he wrote his gospel, it was the preaching material of Peter that he was setting down. On the first missionary journey Paul and Barnabas had taken Mark with them to be their secretary (<a href='B:510 13:5'>Act 13:5</a>); but in the middle of the journey, when things got difficult, Mark quit and went home (<a href='B:510 13:13'>Act 13:13</a>). It was long before Paul could forgive that. When they were about to set out on the second missionary journey, Barnabas once more wished to take Mark with them. But Paul refused to take the quitter again, and on this issue he and Barnabas parted company and never worked together again (<a href='B:510 15:36-40'>Act 15:36-40</a>). Tradition says that Mark went as a missionary to Egypt and founded the Church at Alexandria. What happened in the interim we do not know; but we do know that he was with Paul in his last imprisonment who had once again come to look on him as a most useful man to have around (<a href='B:640 1:24'>Phm 1:24</a>; <a href='B:620 4:11'>2Ti 4:11</a>). Mark was the man who redeemed himself Here in this brief reference there is an echo of the old, unhappy story. Paul instructs the Church at Colosse to receive Mark and to give him a welcome if he should come. Why does he do that? Doubtless because his Churches looked with suspicion on the man whom Paul had once dismissed as useless for the service of Christ. And now Paul, with his habitual courtesy and thoughtfulness, is making sure that Mark's past will not stand in his way by giving him full approval as one of his trusted friends. The end of Mark's career is a tribute at one and the same time to Mark and to Paul.<p/>Of Jesus, who was called Justus, we know nothing but his name.<p/>These were Paul's helps and comforters. We know that it was but a cool welcome that the Jews in Rome gave him (<a href='B:510 28:17-29'>Act 28:17-29</a>); but there were men with him in Rome whose loyalty must have warmed his heart.<p/><b>MORE NAMES OF HONOUR</b> (<a href='B:580 4:12-15'>Col 4:12-15</a>)


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 Epaphras, one of yourselves, the slave of Jesus Christ, greets you. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand mature and fully assured in the faith, engaged in doing the will of God. I bear him witness that he has toiled greatly for you and for those in Laodicaea and in Hierapolis. Luke, the beloved physician, greets you, and so does Demas. Greet the brothers in Laodicaea and Nymphas and the Church in their house.<p/></i><p/>So this honour-roll of Christian workers goes on.<p/>There was Epaphras. He must have been the minister of the Church at Colosse (<a href='B:580 1:7'>Col 1:7</a>). This passage would seem to mean that he was, in fact, the overseer of the Churches in the group of three towns, Hierapolis, Laodicaea and Colosse. He was a servant of God who prayed and toiled for the people over whom God had set him.<p/>There was Luke the beloved physician, who was with Paul to the end (<a href='B:620 4:11'>2Ti 4:11</a>). Was he a doctor, who gave up what might have been a lucrative career in order to tend Paul's thorn in the flesh and to preach Christ?<p/>There was Demas. It is significant that Demas' name is the only one to which some comment of praise and appreciation is not attached. He is Demas and nothing more. There is a story behind the brief references to Demas in the letters of Paul. In <a href='B:640 1:24'>Phm 1:24</a> he is grouped with the men who are described as Paul's fellow-labourers. Here in <a href='B:580 4:14'>Col 4:14</a> he is simply Demas. And in the last mention of him (in <a href='B:620 4:10'>2Ti 4:10</a>) he is Demas who has forsaken Paul because he loved this present world. Surely here we have the faint outlines of a study in degeneration, loss of enthusiasm and failure in the faith. Here is one of the men who refused to be remade by Christ.<p/>There was Nymphas (the Revised Standard Version has the feminine, Nympha) and the Church of the brothers at Laodicaea which met in his house. We must remember that there was no such thing as a special Church building until the third century. Up to that time the Christian congregations met in the houses of those who were the leaders of the Church. There was the Church which met in the house of Aquila and Prisca in Rome and Ephesus (<a href='B:520 16:5'>Rom 16:5</a>; <a href='B:530 16:19'>1Co 16:19</a>). There was the Church which met in the house of Philemon (<a href='B:640 1:2'>Phm 1:2</a>). In the early days, Church and home were identical: and it is still true that every Christian home should also be a Church of Jesus Christ.<p/><b>THE MYSTERY OF THE LAODICAEAN LETTER</b> (<a href='B:580 4:16'>Col 4:16</a>)<p/><i> 4:16 When this letter has been read among you, see to it that it is also read in the Church of the Laodicaeans, and see to it that you read the letter which is on the way to you from Laodicaea.<p/></i><p/>Here is one of the mysteries of Paul's correspondence. The letter to Colosse has to be sent on to Laodicaea. And, says Paul, a letter is on the way from Laodicaea to Colosse. What was this Laodicaean letter? There are four possibilities.<p/>(i) It may have been a special letter to the Church at Laodicaea. If so, it is lost, although, as we shall shortly see, an alleged letter to Laodicaea still exists. It is certain that Paul must have written more letters than we possess. We have only thirteen Pauline letters, covering roughly fifteen years. Many letters of his must have been lost, and it may be that the letter to Laodicaea was such a one.<p/>(ii) It may be the letter we know as Ephesians. It is well-nigh certain that Ephesians was not written to the Church at Ephesus but was an encyclical letter meant to circulate among all the Churches of Asia. It may be that this encyclical had reached Laodicaea and was now on the way to Colosse.<p/>(iii) It may actually be the letter to Philemon. That is a real possibility as we try to show in our study of that letter.<p/>(iv) For many centuries there has been in existence an alleged letter of Paul to the Church at Laodicaea. As we have it, it is in Latin; but the Latin is such that it has every sign of being a literal translation of a Greek original. This letter is actually included in the Codex Fuldensis of the Latin New Testament which belonged to Victor of Capua and which goes back to the sixth century. This alleged Laodicaean letter can be traced even further back. It was mentioned by Jerome in the fifth century, but Jerome himself said that it was a forgery and that most people agreed that it was not authentic. The letter runs as follows:<p/>Paul an apostle, not by men neither through any man, but through<p/>Jesus Christ, to the brothers who are at Laodicaea. Grace be to you<p/>and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.<p/>I thank Christ in every one of my prayers that you remain steadfast<p/>in him, and that you persevere in his works, awaiting his promise<p/>on the day of judgment. Let not the empty words of certain men<p/>seduce you, words of men who try to persuade you that you should<p/>turn away from the truth of the gospel which is preached by me...<p/>(There follows a verse where the text is uncertain).<p/>And now my bonds which I suffer in Christ are plain for all to see;<p/>in them I delight and joy. And this will result for me in<p/>everlasting salvation, a result which will be brought about by your<p/>prayers, and by the help of the Holy Spirit, whether by my life or<p/>by my death. For me to live is to be in Christ, and to die is joy.<p/>And may he in his mercy bring this very thing to pass in you, that<p/>you may have the same love, and that you may be of the one mind.<p/>Therefore, my best-beloved, as you have heard in my presence, so<p/>hold to these things and do them in fear of God, and then there<p/>will be to you life for eternity; for it is God who works in you.<p/>And do without wavering whatever you do.<p/>As for what remains, best-beloved, rejoice in Christ; beware of<p/>those who are sordid in their desire for gain. Let all your<p/>prayers be made known before God; and be you inn in the mind of<p/>Christ.<p/>Do the things which are pure, and true, and modest, and just,<p/>and lovely.<p/>Hold fast what you have heard and received into your heart;<p/>and you will have peace.<p/>The saints salute you.<p/>The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.<p/>Cause that this letter be read to the Colossians, and that the<p/>letter of the Colossians be read to you.<p/>Such is the alleged letter of Paul to the Laodicaeans. It is clearly made up mainly of phrases taken from Philippians with the opening introduction taken from Galatians. There can be little doubt that it was the creation of some pious writer who read in Colossians that there had been a letter to Laodicaea and who proceeded to compose what he thought such a letter should be. Very few people would accept this ancient letter to the Laodicaeans as a genuine letter of Paul.<p/>We cannot explain the mystery of this letter to the Church at Laodicaea. The most commonly accepted explanation is that the reference is to the circular letter which we know as Ephesians; but the suggestion put forward in our study of Philemon is even more romantic and very attractive.<p/><b>THE CLOSING BLESSING</b> (<a href='B:580 4:17-18'>Col 4:17-18</a>)


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 And say to Archippus, "See that you complete that piece of service which you have received from the Lord to do." Here is my greeting in the handwriting of myself, Paul. Remember my bonds. Grace be with you.<p/></i><p/>The letter closes with an urgent spur to Archippus to be true to a special task which has been given to him. It may be that we can never tell what that task was; it may be that our study of Philemon throws light upon it. For the moment we must leave it at that.<p/>To write his letters Paul used a secretary. We know, for instance, that the penman who did the writing of Romans was called Tertius (<a href='B:520 16:22'>Rom 16:22</a>). It was Paul's custom at the end of a letter to write his signature and his blessing with his own hand--and here he does just that.<p/>"Remember my bonds," he says. Again and again in this series of letters Paul refers to his bonds (<a href='B:560 3:1'>Eph 3:1</a>; <a href='B:560 4:1'>Eph 4:1</a>; <a href='B:560 6:20'>Eph 6:20</a>; <a href='B:640 1:9'>Phm 1:9</a>). There is no self-pity and no sentimental plea for sympathy. Paul finishes his letter to the Galatians: "I bear on my body the marks of Jesus" (<a href='B:550 6:17'>Gal 6:17</a>). Of course, there is pathos. Alford comments movingly: "When we read of his chains we should not forget that they moved over the paper as he wrote (his signature). His hand was chained to the soldier that kept him." But Paul's references to his sufferings are not pleas for sympathy; they are his claims to authority, the guarantees of his right to speak. It is as if he said, "This is not a letter from someone who does not know what the service of Christ means or someone who is asking others to do what he is not prepared to do himself. It is a letter from one who has himself suffered and sacrificed for Christ. My only right to speak is that I too have carried the Cross of Christ."<p/>And so the letter comes to its inevitable end. The end of every one of Paul's letters is grace. He always ended by commending others to that grace which he himself had found sufficient for all things.<p/>FURTHER READINGS<p/>Colossians<p/>T. K. Abbott, Ephesians and Colossians (ICC; G)<p/>J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul's Epistles to the Colossians and Philemon (MmC; G)<p/>C. F. D. Moule, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Colossians and to Philemon (CGT; G)<p/>E. F. Scott, The Epistles to Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians (MC; E)<p/>Abbreviations<p/>CGT: Cambridge Greek Testament<p/>ICC: International Critical Commentary<p/>MC: Moffatt Commentary<p/>MmC: Macmillan Commentary<p/>TC: Tyndale Commentary<p/>E: English Text<p/>G: Greek Text 


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<b>LOVE'S INTRODUCTION</b> (<a href='B:590 1:1-10'>1Th 1:1-10</a>) Paul and Silas and Timothy send this letter to the church of the Thessalonians which is in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be to you and peace.<p/>Always we thank God for you all and always we remember you in our prayers. We never cease to remember the work inspired by your faith, the labour prompted by your love and the endurance founded on your hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before God who is also our Father. For we know, brothers beloved by God, how you were chosen. We know that our good news did not come to you with words only, but with power and with the Holy Spirit and with much conviction, just as you know what we showed ourselves to be to you for your sakes. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for although you received the word in much affliction, yet you received it with the joy of the Holy Spirit so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaea. For the word of the Lord went forth from you like a trumpet, not only in Macedonia and Achaea, but the story of your faith towards God has gone forth in every place, so that we had no need to say anything about it. For the people amongst whom we were could tell us your story, and how we entered into you and how you turned from idols towards God, to serve the living and true God and to await the coming of his Son from heaven, even Jesus whom he raised from among the dead, and who rescues us from the coming wrath.<p/></i><p/>Paul sends this letter to the church of the Thessalonians which is in God and the Lord Jesus Christ. God was the very atmosphere in which the Church lived and moved and had its being. Just as the air is in us and we are in the air and cannot live without it, so the true Church is in God and God is in the true Church and there is no true life for the Church without God. Further, the God in whom the Church lives is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and, therefore, the Church does not shiver in the icy fear of a God who is a tyrant but basks in the sunshine of a God who is love.<p/>In this opening chapter we see Paul at his most winsome. In a short time he was going to deal out warning and rebuke; but he begins with unmixed praise. Even when he rebuked, it was never his aim to discourage but always to uplift. In every man there is something fine, and often the best way to rid him of the lower things is to praise the higher things. The best way to eradicate his faults is to praise his virtues so that they will flower all the more; every man reacts better to encouragement than he does to rebuke. It is told that once the Duke of Wellington's cook gave notice and left him. He was asked why he had left so honourable and well-paid a position. His answer was, "When the dinner is good, the Duke never praises me and when it is bad, he never blames me; it was just not worth while." Encouragement was lacking. Paul, like a good psychologist and with true Christian tact, begins with praise even when he means to move on to rebuke.<p/>In <a href='B:590 1:3'>1Th 1:3</a> Paul picks out three great ingredients of the Christian life.<p/>(i) There is work which is inspired by faith. Nothing tells us more about a man than the way in which he works. He may work in fear of the whip; he may work for hope of gain; he may work from a grim sense of duty; or he may work inspired by faith. His faith is that this is his task given him by God and that he is working in the last analysis not for men but for God. Someone has said that the sign of true consecration is when a man can find glory in drudgery.<p/>(ii) There is the labour which is prompted by love. Bernard Newman tells how once he stayed in a Bulgarian peasant's house. All the time he was there the daughter was stitching away at a dress. He said to her, "Don't you ever get tired of that eternal sewing?" "O no!" she said, "you see this is my wedding dress." Work done for love always has a glory.<p/>(iii) There is the endurance which is founded on hope. When Alexander the Great was setting out on his campaigns, he divided all his possessions among his friends. Someone said, "But you are keeping nothing for yourself." "O yes, I am," he said. "I have kept my hopes." A man can endure anything so long as he has hope, for then he is walking not to the night, but to the dawn.<p/>In <a href='B:590 1:4'>1Th 1:4</a> Paul speaks of the Thessalonians as brothers beloved by God. The phrase beloved by God was a phrase which the Jews applied only to supremely great men like Moses and Solomon, and to the nation of Israel itself Now the greatest privilege of the greatest men of God's chosen people has been extended to the humblest of the Gentiles.<p/><a href='B:590 1:8'>1Th 1:8</a> speaks of the faith of the Thessalonians sounding forth like a trumpet; the word could also mean crashing out like a roll of thunder. There is something tremendous about the sheer defiance of early Christianity. When all prudence would have dictated a way of life that would escape notice and so avoid danger and persecution, the Christians blazoned forth their faith. They were never ashamed to show whose they were and whom they sought to serve.<p/>In <a href='B:590 1:9-10'>1Th 1:9-10</a> two words are used which are characteristic of the Christian life. The Thessalonians served God and waited on the coming of Christ. The Christian is called upon to serve in the world and to wait for glory. The loyal service and the patient waiting were the necessary preludes to the glory of heaven. 


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 You yourselves know, brothers, that our coming among you was not to no effect; but after we had--as you know--already undergone suffering and ill-treatment at Philippi, we were bold in our God to tell you the good news of God, and a sore struggle we had. Our appeal to you did not proceed from any delusion, nor from impure motives, nor was it calculated to deceive; but as we have been deemed worthy by God to be entrusted with the good news, so we speak, not as if we were seeking to please men, but rather as if we were seeking to please God, who tests our hearts. At no time, as you know, did we use flattering words; at no time did we use our message as a pretext for greed; God is our witness at no time did we seek reputation from men, either from you or from others, although we might well have claimed a place of weight, as apostles of Christ. But we showed ourselves gentle among you, treating you as a nurse cherishes her children. Yearning for you like this, we wanted to share with you, not only the good news of God, but even our very lives, because you had become very dear to us. For, brothers, you remember our labour and toil. It was while we were working night and day, so as not to be a burden to any of you, that we proclaimed the good news of God to you. You are our witnesses and so is God. How reverently and righteously and blamelessly we behaved to you who believed. As you know, as a father his children we exhorted and encouraged and solemnly charged each one of you to walk worthily of God who calls you to his Kingdom and his glory.<p/></i><p/>Beneath the surface of this passage run the slanders which Paul's opponents at Thessalonica attached to him.<p/>(i) <a href='B:590 2:2'>1Th 2:2</a> refers to the imprisonment and abuse that he had received at Philippi (<a href='B:510 16:16-40'>Act 16:16-40</a>). There were, no doubt, those in Thessalonica who said that this man Paul had a police record, that he was nothing less than a criminal on the run from justice and that obviously no one should listen to a man like that. A really malignant mind will twist anything into a slander.<p/>(ii) <a href='B:590 2:3'>1Th 2:3</a> has behind it no fewer than three charges.<p/>(a) It was being said that Paul's preaching came from sheer delusion. A really original man will always run the risk of being called mad. Festus thought that Paul was mad in later days (<a href='B:510 26:24'>Act 26:24</a>). There was a time when Jesus' friends came and tried to take him home because they thought that he was mad (<a href='B:480 3:21'>Mar 3:21</a>). The Christian standards can be so different from the standards of the world that he who follows them with a single mind and a burning enthusiasm can appear to other men to be off his head.<p/>(b) It was being said that Paul's preaching sprang from impure motives. The word used for impurity (akatharsia, <a href='S:G167'>G167</a>) often has to do with sexual impurity. There was one Christian custom which the heathen often and deliberately misinterpreted; that was the kiss of peace (<a href='B:590 5:26'>1Th 5:26</a>). When the Christians spoke of the Love Feast and the kiss of peace, it was not difficult for an evil mind to read into these phrases what was never there. The trouble often is that a mind itself nasty will see nastiness everywhere.<p/>(c) It was being said that Paul's preaching was guilefully aimed at deluding others. The propagandists of Hitler Germany discovered that if a lie is repeated often enough and loudly enough it will in the end be accepted as the truth. That was the charge which was levelled at Paul.<p/>(iii) <a href='B:590 2:4'>1Th 2:4</a> indicates that Paul was accused of seeking to please men rather than to please God. No doubt that rose from the fact that he preached the liberty of the gospel and the freedom of grace as against the slavery of legalism. There are always people who do not think that they are being religious unless they are being unhappy; and any man who preaches a gospel of joy will find his slanderers, which is exactly what happened to Jesus.<p/>(iv) <a href='B:590 2:5'>1Th 2:5</a> and <a href='B:590 2:9'>1Th 2:9</a> both indicate that there were those who said that Paul was in this business of preaching the gospel for what he could get out of it. The word used for flattery (kolakeia, <a href='S:G2850'>G2850</a>) always describes the flattery whose motive is gain. The trouble in the early Church was that there were people who did attempt to cash in on their Christianity. The first Christian book of order is called The Didache, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, and in it there are some illuminating instructions. "Let every apostle that cometh unto you be received as the Lord. And he shall stay one day and, if need be, the next also, but if he stay three days he is a false prophet. And when the apostle goeth forth, let him take nothing save bread, till he reach his lodging. But if he ask money, he is a false prophet." "No prophet that ordereth a table in the Spirit shall eat of it, else he is a false prophet." "If he that cometh is a passer-by, succour him as far as you can. But he shall not abide with you longer than two or three days unless there be necessity. But if he be minded to settle among you and be a craftsman, let him work and eat. But if he has no trade, according to your understanding, provide that he shall not live idle among you, being a Christian. But if he will not do this, he is a Christmonger: of such men beware." (Didache, chapters 11 and 12). The date of The Didache is about A.D. 100: Even the Early Church knew the perennial problem of those who traded on charity.<p/>(v) <a href='B:590 2:6'>1Th 2:6</a> indicates that Paul was accused of seeking personal prestige. It is the preacher's constant danger that he should seek to display himself and not the message. In <a href='B:590 1:5'>1Th 1:5</a> there is a suggestive thing. Paul does not say, "I came to you." He says, "Our gospel came to you." The man was lost in his message.<p/>(vi) <a href='B:590 2:7'>1Th 2:7</a> indicates that Paul was charged with being something of a dictator. His gentleness was that of a wise father. His was the love which knew how to be firm. To him Christian love was no easy sentimental thing; he knew that men needed discipline, not for their punishment but for the good of their souls.<p/><b>THE SINS OF THE JEWS</b> (<a href='B:590 2:13-16'>1Th 2:13-16</a>)


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 And for this, too, we thank God, that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it, not as the word of men, but--as in truth it is--as the word of God, who also works in you who believe. For, brothers, you became imitators of the Churches of God which are in Judaea in Christ Jesus, for you too suffered the same things at the hands of your own fellow-countrymen as they did at the hands of the Jews; for they killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and they persecuted us, and they do not please God, and they are up against all men, and they try to stop us speaking to the Gentiles that they may be saved; and all this they keep on doing that they may complete the catalogue of their sins. But wrath to the uttermost has come upon them.<p/></i><p/>To the Thessalonians the Christian faith had brought not peace but trouble. Their new-found loyalty had involved them in persecution. Paul's method of encouraging them is very interesting. It is in effect to say to them,<p/>"Brothers, we are treading<p/>Where the saints have trod."<p/>Their persecution was a badge of honour which entitled them to rank with the picked regiments of the army of Christ.<p/>But the great interest of this passage is that in <a href='B:590 2:15-16'>1Th 2:15-16</a> Paul draws up a kind of catalogue of the errors and the sins of the Jews.<p/>(i) They killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets. When God's messengers came to them they eliminated them. One of the grim things about the gospel narrative is the intensity with which the leaders of the Jews sought to get rid of Jesus before he could do any more damage. But no man ever rendered a message inoperative by slaying the messenger who brought it. Someone tells of a missionary who went to a primitive tribe. He had to use primitive methods to get his message across; so he had a chart painted which showed the progress to heaven of the man who accepted Christ and the descent to hell of the man who rejected him. The message disturbed the tribe. They did not want it to be true. So they burned the chart and, having done so, thought all was well! A man may refuse to listen to the message of Jesus Christ but he cannot eliminate it from the structure of the universe.<p/>(ii) They persecuted the Christians. Even although they themselves refused to accept the message of Christ, they,night have allowed others to listen to it and, if they wished, to accept it. Let a man always remember that there are more ways to heaven than one; and let him keep himself from intolerance.<p/>(iii) They did not try to please God. The Church's trouble has often been that it has clung to a man-made religion instead of a God-given faith. The question men have too often asked is, "What do I think?" instead of, "What does God say?" It is not our puny logic that matters; it is God's revelation.<p/>(iv) They were up against all men. In the ancient world the Jews were, in fact, accused of "hatred of the human race." Their sin was the sin of arrogance. They regarded themselves as the Chosen People, as indeed they were. But they regarded themselves as chosen for privilege and never dreamed that they were chosen for service. Their aim was that some day the world should serve them, not that at all times they should serve the world. The man who thinks only of his own rights and privileges will always be up against other men--and, what is more serious, he will be up against God.<p/>(v) They wished to keep the offer of God's love exclusively to themselves and did not wish the Gentiles to have any share in his grace. Someone has summed up the exclusive attitude in four bitter lines of verse,<p/>"We are God's chosen few;<p/>All others will be dammed.<p/>There is no room in heaven for you;<p/>We can't have heaven crammed."<p/>There is something fundamentally wrong with a religion which shuts a man off from his fellow-men. If a man really loves God that love must run over into love for his fellow-men. So far from wanting to hug his privileges to himself, he will be filled with a passion to share them.<p/><b>OUR GLORY AND OUR JOY</b> (<a href='B:590 2:17-20'>1Th 2:17-20</a>)


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 But, brothers, when we had been separated from you--in presence but not in heart--for a short time, we were the more exceedingly eager with a great desire to see your face. So we wished to come to you--I Paul longed for it once and again--but Satan blocked our way. For who is our hope or our joy or the crown in which we boast? Is it not even you, in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For you are our glory and our joy.<p/></i><p/>First Thessalonians has been called "a classic of friendship," and here is a passage where Paul's deep affection for his friends breathes through his words. Across the centuries we can still feel the throb of love in these sentences.<p/>Paul uses two interesting pictures in this passage.<p/>(i) He speaks of Satan blocking his way when he desired to come to Thessalonica. The word he uses (egkoptein, <a href='S:G1465'>G1465</a>) is the technical word for putting up a road-block calculated to stop an expedition on the march. It is Satan's work to throw obstacles into the Christian's way--and it is our work to surmount them.<p/>(ii) He speaks of the Thessalonians being his crown. In Greek there are two words for crown. The one is diadema (<a href='S:G1238'>G1238</a>) which is used almost exclusively for the royal crown. The other is stephanos (<a href='S:G4735'>G4735</a>) which is used almost exclusively for the victor's crown in some contest and especially for the athlete's crown of victory in the games. It is stephanos (<a href='S:G4735'>G4735</a>) that Paul uses here. The only prize in life that he really valued was to see his converts living well.<p/>W. M. Macgregor used to quote the saying of John when he was thinking of the students whom he had taught, "No greater joy can I have than this, to hear that my children follow the truth." (<a href='B:710 1:4'>3Jn 1:4</a>). Paul would have said amen to that. The glory of any teacher lies in his students; and should the day come when they have left him far behind the glory is still greater. A man's greatest glory lies in those whom he has set or helped on the path to Christ.<p/>Anne Ross Cousin turned into verse the thoughts of Samuel Rutherford as he lay in prison in Aberdeen. In one verse she pictures him thinking of his old congregation in Anwoth:<p/>"Fair Anwoth on the Solway<p/>To me thou still art dear;<p/>Even from the verge of heaven<p/>I drop for thee a tear.<p/>O! if one soul from Anwoth<p/>Shall meet me at God's right hand,<p/>My heaven will be two heavens<p/>In Immanuel's land."<p/>Nothing that we can do can bring us credit in the sight of God; but at the last the stars in a man's crown will be those whom he led nearer to Jesus Christ. 


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 So, when we could not stand it any longer, we made up our minds to be left all alone in Athens, and we sent Timothy our brother and God's servant in the good news of Christ, to strengthen you and encourage you about your faith, to see that none of you is beguiled into leaving the faith because of these afflictions, for you yourselves know that that is the very work that God has appointed us to do. For, when we were with you, we told you beforehand that we Christians always suffer for our faith--as indeed it has turned out as you well know. So then, no longer able to stand it, I sent to find out how your faith is doing, in case the tempter had put you to the test and our labour should turn out to be all for nothing. But now that Timothy has come back to us from you, and has brought us the good news of your faith and love, and has told us that you always think kindly of us and that you always yearn to see us--just as we yearn to see you--because of this we have been encouraged, brothers, by you through your faith in all our straits and in all our afflictions, and because now life for us is indeed worth living if you stand fast in the Lord, what thanks can we return to God for you for all the joy with which we rejoice because of you before God, while night and day we keep on praying with all the intensity of our hearts to see your face and to fill up the gaps in your faith?<p/></i><p/>In this passage there breathes the very essence of the spirit of the pastor.<p/>(i) There is affection. We can never affect or win people unless we begin, quite simply, by liking them. It was Carlyle who said of London, "There are three and a half million people in this city--mostly fools!" The man who begins by despising men or by disliking them can never go on to save them.<p/>(ii) There is anxiety. When a man has put the best of himself into anything, when he has launched anything from a liner to a pamphlet, he is anxious until he knows how the work of his hands and of his brain will weather the storms. If that is true of things, it is still more poignantly true of people. When a parent has trained a child with love and sacrifice, he is anxious when that child is launched out on the difficulties and dangers of life in the world. When a teacher has taught a child and put something of himself into that teaching, he is anxious to see how that training will stand the test of life. When a minister has received a young person into the Church, after years of training in Sunday School and in Bible Class and latterly in the First Communicants' Class, in confirmation class, he is anxious to know how he will fulfil the duties and the obligations of Church membership. Supremely it is so with Jesus Christ. He staked so much on men and loved them with such a sacrificial love that he anxiously watches and waits to see how they will use that love. A man must stand awed and humbled when he remembers how in earth and in heaven there are those who are bearing him on their hearts and watching how he fares.<p/>(iii) There is help. When Paul sent Timothy to Thessalonica it was not nearly so much to inspect the Church there as it was to help it. It should be the great aim of every parent, every teacher and every preacher, not so much to criticize and condemn those in his charge for their faults and mistakes but to save them from these faults and mistakes. The Christian attitude to the sinner and the struggler must never be that of condemnation but always that of help.<p/>(iv) There is joy. Paul was glad that his converts were standing fast. He had the joy of one who had created something which would stand the tests of time. There is no joy like that of the parent who can point to a child who has done well.<p/>(v) There is prayer. Paul carried his people on his heart to God's mercy seat. We will never know from how much sin we have been saved and how much temptation we have conquered all because someone prayed for us. It is told that once a servant-girl became a member of a Church. She was asked what Christian work she did. She said that she had not the opportunity to do much because her duties were so constant but, she said, "When I go to bed I take the morning newspaper to my bed with me; and I read the notices of the births and I pray for all the little babies; and I read the notices of marriage and I pray that those who have been married may be happy; and I read the announcements of death and I pray that the sorrowing may be comforted." No man can ever tell what tides of grace flowed from her attic bedroom. When we can serve people no other way, when, like Paul, we are unwillingly separated from them, there is one thing we can still do--we can pray for them.<p/><b>ALL IS OF GOD</b> (<a href='B:590 3:11-13'>1Th 3:11-13</a>)


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 May he who is our God and Father and the Lord Jesus Christ direct our way to you. May the Lord increase you and make you to abound in love to each other and to all men, even as we do towards you, in order that he may strengthen your hearts so that you may be blameless in holiness before the God who is our Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints.<p/></i><p/>It is in a simple passage like this that the instinctive turn of Paul's mind is best seen. For him everything was of God.<p/>(i) He prays to God to open a way for him whereby he may come to Thessalonica. It was to God that he turned for guidance in the ordinary day to day problems of life. One of the great mistakes of life is to turn to God only in the overpowering emergencies and the shattering crises.<p/>I remember once talking to three young men who had just completed a yachting expedition up the west coast of Scotland. One said to me, "You know, when we are at home we hardly ever listen to the weather forecasts, but when we were on that yacht we listened to them with all our ears." It is quite possible to do without the weather forecasts when life is comfortably safe; it is essential to listen when life might depend on them.<p/>We are apt to try to do the same with God. In ordinary things we disregard him, thinking that we can manage well enough by ourselves; in the emergency we clutch at him, knowing that we cannot get through without him. It was not so with Paul. Even in an ordinary routine thing like a journey from Athens to Thessalonica it was to God that he looked for guidance. We use him to try to achieve a God-rescued life; Paul companied with him to achieve a God-directed life.<p/>(ii) He prays to God that he will enable the Thessalonians to fulfil the law of love in their daily lives. We often wonder why the Christian life is so difficult, especially in the ordinary everyday relationships. The answer may very well be that we are trying to live it by ourselves. The man who goes out in the morning without prayer is, in effect, saying, "I can quite well tackle today on my own." The man who lays himself to rest without speaking to God, is, in effect, saying, "I can bear on my own whatever consequences today has brought." John Buchan once described an atheist as "a man who has no invisible means of support." It may well be that our failure to live the Christian life well is due to our trying to live it without the help of God--which is an impossible assignment.<p/>(iii) Paul prays to God for the ultimate safety. At this time his mind was full of thoughts of the Second Coming of Christ when men would stand before the judgment seat of God. It was his prayer that God would so preserve his people in righteousness that on that day they would not be ashamed. The only way to prepare to meet God is to live daily with him. The shock of that day will be not for those who have so lived that they have become God's friends but for those who meet him as a terrible stranger. 


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 Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that, as you have received instructions from us as to how you must behave to please God, even so you do behave, that you may go on from more to more. For you know what orders we gave you through the Lord Jesus; for this is God's will for you, that you should live consecrated lives, I mean, that you should keep yourselves from fornication, that each of you should know how to possess his own body in consecration and in honour, not in the passion of lustful desire, like the Gentiles who do not know God, that in this kind of thing you should not transgress against your brother or try to take advantage of him. For of all these things the Lord is the avenger, as we have already told you and testified to you. For God did not call us to impurity but to consecration. Therefore he who rejects this instruction does not reject a man, but rejects the God who gives his holy Spirit to us.<p/></i><p/>It may seem strange that Paul should go to such lengths to inculcate sexual purity in a Christian congregation; but two things have to be remembered. First, the Thessalonians had only newly come into the Christian faith and they had come from a society in which chastity was an unknown virtue; they were still in the midst of such a society and the infection of it was playing upon them all the time. It would be exceedingly difficult for them to unlearn what they had for all their lives accepted as natural. Second, there never was an age in history when marriage vows were so disregarded and divorce so disastrously easy. The phrase which we have translated "that each of you should possess his own body in consecration and in honour" could be translated, "that each of you may possess his own wife in consecration and in honour."<p/>Amongst the Jews marriage was theoretically held in the highest esteem. It was said that a Jew must die rather than commit murder, idolatry or adultery. But, in fact, divorce was tragically easy. The Deuteronomic law laid it down that a man could divorce his wife if he found "some uncleanness" or "some matter of shame" in her. The difficulty was in defining what was a "matter of shame." The stricter Rabbis confined that to adultery alone; but there was a laxer teaching which widened its scope to include matters like spoiling the dinner by putting too much salt in the food; going about in public with her head uncovered; talking with men in the streets; speaking disrespectfully of her husband's parents in his presence; being a brawling woman (which was defined as a woman whose voice could be heard in the next house). It was only to be expected that the laxer view prevailed.<p/>In Rome for the first five hundred and twenty years of the Republic there had not been a single divorce; but now under the Empire, as it has been put, divorce was a matter of caprice. As Seneca said, "Women were married to be divorced and divorced to be married." In Rome the years were identified by the names of the consuls; but it was said that fashionable ladies identified the years by the names of their husbands. Juvenal quotes an instance of a woman who had eight husbands in five years. Morality was dead.<p/>In Greece immorality had always been quite blatant. Long ago Demosthenes had written: "We keep prostitutes for pleasure; we keep mistresses for the day-to-day needs of the body; we keep wives for the begetting of children and for the faithful guardianship of our homes." So long as a man supported his wife and family there was no shame whatsoever in extra-marital relationships.<p/>It was to men and women who had come out of a society like that that Paul wrote this paragraph. What may seem to many the merest commonplace of Christian living was to them startlingly new. One thing Christianity did was to lay down a completely new code in regard to the relationship of men and women; it is the champion of purity and the guardian of the home. This can not be affirmed too plainly in our own day which again has seen a pronounced shift in standards of sexual behaviour.<p/>In a book entitled What I Believe, a symposium of the basic beliefs of a selection of well-known men and women, Kingsley Martin writes: "Once women are emancipated and begin to earn their own living and are able to decide for themselves whether or not they have children, marriage customs are inevitably revised. 'Contraception,' a well-known economist once said to me, 'is the most important event since the discovery of fire.' Basically he was right, for it fundamentally alters the relations of the sexes, on which family life is built. The result in our day is a new sexual code; the old 'morality' which winked at male promiscuity but punished female infidelity with a life-time of disgrace, or even, in some puritanical cultures, with a cruel death, has disappeared. The new code tends to make it the accepted thing that men and women can live together as they will, but to demand marriage of them if they decide to have children."<p/>The new morality is only the old immorality brought up-to-date. There is a clamant necessity in Britain, as there was in Thessalonica, to place before men and women the uncompromising demands of Christian morality, "for God did not call us to impurity but to consecration."<p/><b>THE NECESSITY OF THE DAY'S WORK</b> (<a href='B:590 4:9-12'>1Th 4:9-12</a>)


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 You do not need that I should write to you about brotherly love; for you yourselves are taught of God to love one another. Indeed you do this very thing to all the brothers who are in the whole of Macedonia. But we do urge you, brothers, to go on to more and more, and to aim at keeping calm and minding your own business. We urge you to work with your hands, as we instructed you to do, so that your behaviour may seem to those outside the Church a lovely thing and so that you may need no one to support you.<p/></i><p/>This passage begins with praise but it ends in warning; and with the warning we come to the immediate situation behind the letter. Paul urged the Thessalonians to keep calm, to mind their own business and to go on working with their hands. The preaching of the Second Coming had produced an odd and awkward situation in Thessalonica. Many of the Thessalonians had given up their daily work and were standing about in excited groups, upsetting themselves and everybody else, while they waited for the Second Coming to arrive. Ordinary life had been disrupted; the problem of making a living had been abandoned; and Paul's advice was preeminently practical.<p/>(i) He told them, in effect, that the best way in which Jesus Christ could come upon them was that he should find them quietly, efficiently and diligently doing their daily job. Principal Rainy used to say, "Today I must lecture; tomorrow I must attend a committee meeting; on Sunday I must preach; some day I must die. Well then, let us do as well as we can each thing as it comes to us." The thought that Christ will some day come, that life as we know it will end, is not a reason for stopping work; it is a reason for working all the harder and more faithfully. It is not hysterical and useless waiting but quiet and useful work which will be a man's passport to the Kingdom.<p/>(ii) He told them that, whatever happened, they must commend Christianity to the outsider by the diligence and the beauty of their lives. To go on as they were doing, to allow their so-called Christianity to turn them into useless citizens, was simply to bring Christianity into discredit. Paul here touched on a tremendous truth. A tree is known by its fruits; and a religion is known by the kind of men it produces. The only way to demonstrate that Christianity is the best of all faiths is to show that it produces the best of all men. When we Christians show that our Christianity makes us better workmen, truer friends, kinder men and women, then we are really preaching. The outside world may never come into church to hear a sermon but it sees us every day outside church; and it is our lives which must be the sermons to win men for Christ.<p/>(iii) He told them that they must aim at independence and never become spongers on charity. The effect of the conduct of the Thessalonians was that others had to support them. There is a certain paradox in Christianity. It is the Christian's duty to help others, for many, through no fault of their own, cannot attain that independence; but it is also the Christian's duty to help himself. There will be in the Christian a lovely charity which delights to give and a proud independence which seems to take so long as his own two hands can supply his needs.<p/><b>CONCERNING THOSE WHO ARE ASLEEP</b> (<a href='B:590 4:13-18'>1Th 4:13-18</a>)


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 We do not wish you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who are asleep, because we do not wish you to sorrow as the rest of people do because they have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also we can be sure that God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. For we tell you this, not by our own authority but by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who survive until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not take precedence over those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God; and the dead who are in Christ will rise first, and then we who are alive, who survive, will be caught up by the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air. And so we shall be always with the Lord. So then encourage one another with these words.<p/></i><p/>The idea of the Second Coming had brought another problem to the people of Thessalonica. They were expecting it very soon; they fully expected to be themselves alive when it came but they were worried about those Christians who had died. They could not be sure that those who had already died would share the glory of that day which was so soon to come. Paul's answer is that there will be one glory for those who have died and those who survive.<p/>He tells them that they must not sorrow as those who have no hope. In face of death the pagan world stood in despair. They met it with grim resignation and bleak hopelessness. Aeschylus wrote, "Once a man dies there is no resurrection." Theocritus wrote, "There is hope for those who are alive, but those who have died are without hope." Catullus wrote, "When once our brief light sets, there is one perpetual night through which we must sleep." On their tombstones grim epitaphs were carved. "I was not; I became; I am not; I care not." One of the most pathetic papyrus letters that has come down to us is a letter of sympathy which runs like this. "Irene to Taonnophris and Philo, good comfort. I was as sorry and wept over the departed one as I wept for Didymas. And all things whatsoever were fitting, I did, and all mine, Epaphroditus and Thermouthion and Philion and Apollonius and Plantas. But nevertheless against such things one can do nothing. Therefore comfort ye one another."<p/>Paul lays down a great principle. The man who has lived and died in Christ is still in Christ even in death and will rise in him. Between Christ and the man who loves him there is a relationship which nothing can break, a relationship which overpasses death. Because Christ died and rose again, so the man who is one with Christ will rise again.<p/>The picture Paul draws of the day when Christ will come is poetry, an attempt to describe what is indescribable. At the Second Coming Christ will descend from heaven to earth. He will utter the word of command and thereupon the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God will waken the dead, then the dead and the living alike will be caught up in the chariots of the clouds to meet Christ; and thereafter they will be forever with their Lord. We are not meant to take with crude and insensitive literalism what is a seer's vision. It is not the details which are important. What is important is that in life and in death the Christian is in Christ and that is a union which nothing can break. 


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 You have no need, brothers, that anything should be written to you about the times and seasons; for you yourselves well know that, as a thief in the night, so the day of the Lord comes. When they are saying, "All is well; all is safe," then sudden destruction comes upon them, just as the labour pains come on a woman who is with child, and very certainly they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in the dark. You are not in a situation in which the day, like a thief, can surprise you. For you are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to night or darkness. So then, let us not sleep, as the rest of men do, but let us be watchful and sober. For those who sleep sleep at night; and those who get drunk get drunk at night; but, as for us, because we belong to the day, let us be sober and let us put on the breastplate of faith and love, and let us take for a helmet the hope of salvation, because God did not appoint us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, so that, whether we wake or whether we sleep, we may live with him. So then encourage each other and build up one another--as indeed you are doing.<p/></i><p/>We shall not fully understand the New Testament pictures of the Second Coming unless we remember that they have an Old Testament background. In the Old Testament the conception of the Day of the Lord is very common; and all the pictures and apparatus which belong to the Day of the Lord have been attached to the Second Coming. To the Jew all time was divided into two ages. There was this present age which was wholly and incurably bad. There was the age to come which would be the golden age of God. In between there was the Day of the Lord which would be a terrible day. It would be a day in which one world was shattered and another was born.<p/>Many of the most terrible pictures in the Old Testament are of the Day of the Lord (<a href='B:290 22:5'>Isa 22:5</a>; <a href='B:290 13:9'>Isa 13:9</a>; <a href='B:430 1:14-16'>Zep 1:14-16</a>; <a href='B:370 5:18'>Amo 5:18</a>; <a href='B:300 30:7'>Jer 30:7</a>; <a href='B:460 4:1'>Mal 4:1</a>; <a href='B:360 2:31'>Joe 2:31</a>). Its main characteristics were as follows. (i) It would come suddenly and unexpectedly. (ii) It would involve a cosmic upheaval in which the universe was shaken to its very foundations. (iii) It would be a time of judgment.<p/>Very naturally the New Testament writers to all intents and purposes identified the Day of the Lord with the day of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. We will do well to remember that these are what we might call stock pictures. They are not meant to be taken literally. They are pictorial visions of what would happen when God broke into time.<p/>Naturally men were anxious to know when that day would come. Jesus himself had bluntly said that no man knew when that day or hour would be, that even he did not know and only God knew (<a href='B:480 13:32'>Mar 13:32</a>; compare <a href='B:470 24:36'>Mat 24:36</a>; <a href='B:510 1:7'>Act 1:7</a>). But that did not stop people speculating about it, as indeed they still do, although it is surely almost blasphemous that men should seek for knowledge which was denied even to Jesus. To these speculations Paul has two things to say.<p/>He repeats that the coming of the day will be sudden. It will come like a thief in the night. But he also insists that that is no reason why a man should be caught unawares. It is only the man who lives in the dark and whose deeds are evil who will be caught unprepared. The Christian lives in the light and no matter when that day comes, if he is watchful and sober, it will find him ready. Waking or sleeping, the Christian is living already with Christ and is therefore always prepared.<p/>No man knows when God's call will come for him and there are certain things that cannot be left until the last moment. It is too late to prepare for an examination when the examination paper is before you. It is too late to make the house secure when the storm has burst. When Queen Mary of Orange was dying, her chaplain wished to read to her. She answered, "I have not left this matter till this hour." It was similar with an old Scotsman to whom someone offered comforting sayings near the end. The old man's reply was, "Ah theekit (thatched) ma hoose when the weather was warm." If a call comes suddenly, it need not find us unprepared. The man who has lived all his life with Christ is never unprepared to enter his nearer presence.<p/><b>ADVICE TO A CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:590 5:12-22'>1Th 5:12-22</a>)


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 We ask you, brothers, to give due recognition to those who labour among you and to those who preside over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to hold them very highly in love because of the work that they are doing.<p/>Be at peace among yourselves. We urge you brothers, warn the lazy, comfort the fearful, cling to the weak, be patient with all. See that no one pays back evil for evil. Always pursue the good for each other and for all. Always rejoice. Never stop praying. In everything give thanks. For this is God's will in Christ Jesus for you. Don't quench the gifts of the Spirit, don't make light Of manifestations of the gift of prophecy. Test everything, hold fast to the fine thing. Keep yourselves well away from every kind of evil.<p/></i><p/>Paul comes to an end with a chain of jewels of good advice. He sets them out in the most summary way but every one is such that every Christian should ponder it.<p/>Respect your leaders, says Paul; and the reason for the respect is the work that they are doing. It is not a question of personal prestige; it is the task which makes a man great and it is the service he is doing which is his badge of honour.<p/>Live at peace. It is impossible that the gospel of love should be preached in an atmosphere poisoned by hate. Better far that a man should quit a congregation in which he is unhappy and in which he makes others unhappy and find one where he may be at peace.<p/><a href='B:590 5:14'>1Th 5:14</a> picks out those who need special care and attention. The word used for lazy originally described a soldier who had left the ranks. The phrase really means "Warn the quitters." The fearful are literally those whose souls are small. In every community there is the faint-hearted brother who instinctively fears the worst but in every community there should be Christians who, being brave, help others to be brave. "Cling to the weak" is a lovely piece of advice. Instead of letting the weak brother drift away and finally vanish altogether, the Christian community should make a deliberate attempt to grapple him to the Church in such a way that he cannot escape. It should forge bonds of fellowship and persuasion to hold on to the man who is likely to stray away. To be patient with all is perhaps hardest of all, for the last lesson most of us learn is to suffer fools gladly.<p/>Don't take revenge, says Paul. Even if a man seeks our evil we must conquer him by seeking his good.<p/><a href='B:590 5:16-18'>1Th 5:16-18</a> give us three marks of a genuine Church. (i) It is a happy Church. There is in it that atmosphere of joy which makes its members feel that they are bathed in sunshine. True Christianity is an exhilarating and not a depressing thing. (ii) It is a praying Church. Maybe our Church's prayers would be more effective if we remembered that "they pray best together who also pray alone." (iii) It is a thankful Church. There is always something for which to give thanks; even on the darkest day there are blessings to count. We must remember that if we face the sun the shadows will fall behind us but if we turn our backs on the sun all the shadows will be in front.<p/>In <a href='B:590 5:19-20'>1Th 5:19-20</a> Paul warns the Thessalonians not to despise spiritual gifts. The prophets were really the equivalent of our modern preachers. It was they who brought the message of God to the congregation. Paul is really saying, "If a man has anything to say, don't stop him saying it."<p/><a href='B:590 5:21-22'>1Th 5:21-22</a> describe the constant duty of the Christian. He must use Christ as touchstone by which to test all things; and even when it is hard he must keep on doing the fine thing and hold himself aloof from every kind of evil.<p/>When a Church lives up to Paul's advice, it will indeed shine like a light in a dark place; it will have joy within itself and power to win others.<p/><b>THE GRACE OF CHRIST BE WITH YOU</b> (<a href='B:590 5:23-28'>1Th 5:23-28</a>)


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 May the God of peace himself consecrate you through and through; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept complete so that you will be blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. You can rely on him who calls you--and he will do this very thing.<p/>Brothers, pray for us. Greet all the brothers with a holy kiss. I adjure you by the Lord that this letter should be read to all the brothers. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.<p/></i><p/>At the end of his letter Paul commends his friends to God in body, soul and spirit. But there is one very lovely saying here. "Brothers, said Paul, "pray for us." It is a wonderful thing that the greatest saint of them all should feel that he was strengthened by the prayers of the humblest Christians. Once his friends came to congratulate a great statesman who had been elected to the highest office his country could offer him. He said, "Don't give me your congratulations, but give me your prayers." For Paul prayer was a golden chain in which he prayed for others and others prayed for him.<p/>FURTHER READINGS<p/>Thessalonians<p/>J. E. Frame, Thessalonians (ICC; G)<p/>G. Milligan, St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians (MmC; G)<p/>W. Neil, The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians (MC; E)<p/>Abbreviations<p/>CGT: Cambridge Greek Testament<p/>ICC: International Critical Commentary<p/>MC: Moffatt Commentary<p/>MmC: Macmillan Commentary<p/>TC: Tyndale Commentary<p/>E: English Text<p/>G: Greek Text 


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 Paul and Silas and Timothy send this letter to the Church of the Thessalonians which is in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.<p/>Brothers, we ought always to thank God for you, as it is fitting, because your faith is on the increase, and because the love of each one of you all for each other grows ever greater, so that we ourselves are telling proudly about you in the Churches of God, about your constancy and faith amidst all the persecutions and afflictions which you endure--which indeed is proof positive that the judgment of God was right that you should be deemed worthy of the Kingdom of God for the sake of which you are suffering. And just that judgment is, if indeed it is right in God's sight, as it is, to recompense affliction to those who afflict you and relief with us to you who are afflicted, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with the power of his angels in a flame of fire when he renders a just recompense to those who do not recognize God and who do not obey the good news of our Lord Jesus. These are such men that they will pay the penalty of eternal destruction which will banish them forever from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his strength, when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and admired in all those who believed--because our testimony to you was believed--on that day. To this end we also always pray for you, that our God may deem you worthy of the call that came to you and that he may by his power bring to completion every resolve after goodness and every work that faith inspires, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in it, according to the grace of our God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.<p/></i><p/>There is all the wisdom of the wise leader in this opening passage. It seems that the Thessalonians had sent a message to Paul full of self-doubtings. They had been timorously afraid that their faith was not going to stand the test and that--in the expressive modern phrase--they were not going to make the grade. Paul's answer was not to push them further into the slough of despond by pessimistically agreeing with them but to pick out their virtues and achievements in such a way that these despondent, frightened Christians might square their shoulders and say, "Well, if Paul thinks that of us we'll make a fight of it yet."<p/>"Blessed are those," said Mark Rutherford, "who heal us of our self-despisings, and Paul did just that for the Thessalonian Church. He knew that often judicious praise can do what indiscriminate criticism cannot do and that wise praise never makes a man rest upon his laurels but fills him with the desire to do still better.<p/>There are three things which Paul picked out as being the marks of a vital Church.<p/>(i) A faith which is strong. It is the mark of the advancing Christian that he grows surer of Jesus Christ every day. The faith which may begin as an hypothesis ends as a certainty. James Agate once said, "My mind is not like a bed which has to be made and remade. There are some things of which I am absolutely sure." The Christian comes to that stage when to the thrill of Christian experience he adds the discipline of Christian thought.<p/>(ii) A love which is increasing. A growing Church is one which grows greater in service. A man may begin serving his fellowmen as a duty which his Christian faith lays upon him; he will end by doing it because in it he finds his greatest joy. The life of service opens up the great discovery that unselfishness and happiness go hand in hand.<p/>(iii) A constancy which endures. The word Paul uses is a magnificent word. It is hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>) which is usually translated endurance but does not mean the ability passively to bear anything that may descend upon us. It has been described as "a masculine constancy under trial" and describes the spirit which not only endures the circumstances in which it finds itself but masters them. It accepts the blows of life but in accepting them transforms them into stepping stones to new achievement.<p/>Paul's uplifting message ends with the most uplifting vision of all. It ends with what we might call the reciprocal glory. When Christ comes he will be glorified in his saints and admired in those who have believed Here we have the breath-taking truth that our glory is Christ and Christ's glory is ourselves. The glory of Christ is in those who through him have learned to endure and to conquer, and so to shine like lights in a dark place. A teacher's glory lies in the scholars he produces; a parent's in the children he rears not only for living but for life; a master's in his disciples; and to us is given the tremendous privilege and responsibility that Christ's glory can lie in us. We may bring discredit or we may bring glory to the Master whose we are and whom we seek to serve. Can any privileged responsibility be greater than that? 


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 Brothers, in regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and in regard to our being gathered to him, we ask you not to be readily shaken in your mind and not to get into a state of nervous excitement because of any statement purporting to come from us either in the Spirit or by word of mouth or by a letter and alleging that the Day of the Lord is here. Let no one deceive you in any way. The Day of the Lord will not come unless there comes first The Rebellion against God, and unless there be revealed The Man of Sin, The Son of Perdition, the one who opposes himself to and exalts himself against everyone who is called God or made an object of worship so that he attempts to take his seat in the very temple of God and proclaims that he himself is God. Don't you remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? As for the present, you know the power which restrains him so that he may be revealed in his own time. For the secret of lawlessness is even now in operation. But The Man of Sin will appear only when the one who restrains him is removed from the scene. And then The Lawless One will be revealed and the Lord Jesus will destroy him with the breath of his mouth and will render him ineffective by his appearance and his coming. The coming of The Lawless One is for those who are doomed. He will come according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and wonders which issue from falsehood, and with all wicked deceit. They are doomed because they did not receive the love of truth that they might be saved. For this cause God sends them a deceiving energy in order that they might believe in a lie so that all who have not believed but have consented to that principle of unrighteousness may be judged.<p/></i><p/>This is undoubtedly one of the most difficult passages in the whole New Testament; and it is so because it is using terms and thinking in pictures which were perfectly familiar to those to whom Paul was speaking but which are utterly strange to us.<p/>The general picture is this. Paul was telling the Thessalonians that they must give up their nervous, hysterical waiting for the Second Coming. He denied that he had ever said that the Day of the Lord had come. That was a misinterpretation of his words which must not be attributed to him; and he told them that before the Day of the Lord could come much had still to happen.<p/>First there would come an age of rebellion against God; into this world there had already come a secret evil power which was working in the world and on men to bring this time of rebellion. Somewhere there was being kept one who was as much the incarnation of evil as Jesus was the incarnation of God. He was The Man of Sin, The Son of Perdition, The Lawless One. In time the power which was restraining him would be removed from the scene; and then this devil incarnate would come. When he came, he would gather his own people to him just as Jesus Christ had gathered his. Those who had refused to accept Christ were waiting to accept him. Then would come a last battle in which Christ would utterly destroy The Lawless One; Christ's people would be gathered to him and the wicked men who had accepted The Lawless One as their master would be destroyed.<p/>We have to remember one thing. Almost all the Eastern faiths believed in a power of evil as they believed in a power of good; and believed, too, in a kind of battle between God and this power of evil. For instance, the Babylonians had a story that Tiamat, the dragon, had rebelled against Marduk, the creator, and had in the final battle been destroyed. Paul was dealing in a set of ideas which were common property. The Jews, too, had that idea. They called the Satanic power Belial or, more correctly, Beliar. When the Jews wished to describe a man as utterly bad they called him a son of Beliar (<a href='B:50 13:13'>Deu 13:13</a>; <a href='B:110 21:10'>1Ki 21:10</a>; <a href='B:110 21:13'>1Ki 21:13</a>; <a href='B:100 22:5'>2Sa 22:5</a>). In <a href='B:540 6:15'>2Co 6:15</a> Paul uses this term as the opposite of God. This evil incarnate was the antithesis of God. The Christians took this over, later than Paul, under the title Antichrist (<a href='B:690 2:18'>1Jn 2:18</a>; <a href='B:690 2:22'>1Jn 2:22</a>; <a href='B:690 4:3'>1Jn 4:3</a>). Obviously such a power cannot go on existing for ever in the universe; and there was widespread belief in a final battle in which God would triumph and this force of anti-God would be finally destroyed. That is the picture with which Paul is working.<p/>What was the restraining force which was still keeping The Lawless One under control? No one can answer that question with certainty. Most likely Paul meant the Roman Empire. Time and again he himself was to be saved from the fury of the mob by the justice of the Roman magistrate. Rome was the restraining power which kept the world from insane anarchy. But the day would come when that power would be removed--and then would be chaos.<p/>So then Paul pictures a growing rebellion against God, the emergence of one who was the devil incarnate as Christ had been God incarnate, a final struggle and the ultimate triumph of God.<p/>When this incarnate evil came into the world there would be some who would accept him as master, those who had refused Christ; and they along with their evil master would find final defeat and terrible judgment.<p/>However remote these pictures may be from us they nevertheless have certain permanent truth in them.<p/>(i) There is a force of evil in the world. Even if he could not logically prove that there was a devil many a man would say, "I know there is because I have met him." We hide our heads in the sand if we deny that there is an evil power at work amongst men.<p/>(ii) God is in control. Things may seem to be crashing to chaos but in some strange way even the chaos is in God's control.<p/>(iii) The ultimate triumph of God is sure. In the end nothing can stand against him. The Lawless One may have his day but there comes a time when God says, "Thus far and no farther." And so the great question is, "On what side are you? In the struggle at the heart of the universe are you for God--or Satan?"<p/><b>GOD'S DEMAND AND OUR EFFORT</b> (<a href='B:600 2:13-17'>2Th 2:13-17</a>)


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 We ought always to give thanks for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning to be saved by the consecration of the Holy Spirit and by faith in the truth. For this he called you by the good news which we brought that you might obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brothers, stand fast and hold on to the traditions which you were taught either by word of mouth or through our letter.<p/>May the Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and who gave us, by his grace, eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and make you strong OR every good deed and word.<p/></i><p/>In this passage there is a kind of synopsis of the Christian life.<p/>(i) It begins with God's call. We could never even begin to seek God unless he had already found us. The whole initiative is with him; the ground and the moving cause of the whole matter is his seeking love.<p/>(ii) It develops in our effort. The Christian is not called to dream, but to fight; not to stand still, but to climb. He is called not only to the greatest privilege but also to the greatest task in the world.<p/>(iii) This effort is helped continually by two things. (a) It is helped by the teaching, guidance and example of godly men. God speaks to us through those to whom he has already spoken. "A saint," as someone has said, "is a person who makes it easier for others to believe in God." And there are some who help us, not by anything they say or write, but simply by being what they are, men whom to meet is to meet God. (b) It is helped by God himself We are never left to fight and toil alone. He who gives us the task also gives us the strength to do it; more, he actually does it with us. We are not thrown into the battle to meet it with the puny resources we can bring to it. At the back of us and beside us there is God. When Paul was up against it in Corinth, he had a vision by night in which the Lord said to him, "Do not be afraid...for I am with You" (<a href='B:510 18:9-10'>Act 18:9-10</a>). They that are for us are always more than they that are against us.<p/>(iv) This call and this effort are designed to produce two things. (a) They are designed to produce consecration on earth. Literally in Greek a thing which is consecrated is set apart for God. They are meant to set us apart in such a way that God can use us for his service. The result is that a man's life no longer belongs to him to do with it as he likes; it belongs to God for him to use as he likes. (b) They are designed to produce salvation in heaven. The Christian life does not end with time; its goal is eternity. The Christian can regard his present affliction as a light thing in comparison with the glory that shall be. As Christina Rosetti wrote:<p/>"'Does the road wind uphill all the way?'<p/>'Yes, to the very end.'<p/>'Will the day's journey take the whole tong day?'<p/>'From morn to night, my friend.'<p/>'But is there for the night a resting-place?'<p/>'A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.'<p/>'May not the darkness hide it from my face?'<p/>'You cannot miss that inn.'<p/>'Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?'<p/>'Those who have gone before.'<p/>'Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?'<p/>'They will not keep you waiting at that door.'<p/>'Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?'<p/>'Of labour you shall find the sum.'<p/>'Will there be beds for me and all who seek?'<p/>'Yes, beds for all who come.'" 


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 Finally, brothers, keep on praying for us, that the word of God may run its race and receive its crown of glory--as it does in your case--and that we may be saved from these wicked and evil men, for the faith is not for everyone. You can rely on the Lord who will make you steady and who will guard you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord that you both do and will do what we command you to do. May the Lord direct your hearts so that you may feel the love of God and display the endurance which Christ can give.<p/></i><p/>Once again Paul comes to the end of a letter with the request that his people should pray for him (compare <a href='B:590 5:25'>1Th 5:25</a>; <a href='B:520 15:30'>Rom 15:30</a> ff.; <a href='B:640 1:22'>Phm 1:22</a>). There is something deeply moving in the thought of this giant among men asking for the prayers of the Thessalonians who so well recognized their own weakness. Nowhere is Paul's humility more clear to see. And the fact that he, as it were, threw himself on their hearts must have done much to bind even his opponents to him, because it is very difficult to dislike a man who asks you to pray for him.<p/>But in spite of his love for and trust in men Paul was a realist. The faith, he said, is not for everyone. We can be certain that he said it not cynically but sorrowfully. Once again we see the tremendous responsibility of free-will. We can use it to open our hearts and we can use it to shut them. Faith's appeal is not selective, it goes out to every man; but the heart of man can refuse to respond.<p/>In the last verse of this passage we see what we might call the inward and the outward characteristics of the Christian. The inward characteristic is the awareness of the love of God, the deep awareness that we cannot drift beyond his care, the sense that the everlasting arms are underneath us. One of the basic needs of life is security and we find that need met in the consciousness of the unchanging love of God. The outward characteristic is the endurance which Christ can give. We live in a world where there are more nervous breakdowns than at any time in history. It is a sign that more and more people have the feeling that they cannot cope with life. The outward characteristic of the Christian is that when others break he stands erect and when others collapse he shoulders his burden and goes on. With the love of God in his heart and the strength of Christ in his life a man can face anything.<p/><b>DISCIPLINE IN BROTHERLY LOVE</b> (<a href='B:600 3:6-18'>2Th 3:6-18</a>)


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 Brothers, we command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, keep yourselves from every brother who behaves like a truant from duty and who does not conduct himself in accordance with the teaching which they received from us, for you yourselves know that you must imitate us because we never played the truant from work when we were among you nor did we eat bread which we had received from you without paying for it, but in labour and toil we kept on working night and day so that we would not be a burden to any of you. It is not that we had not the right to claim support from you, but we kept at work that we might give ourselves to you as an example for you to imitate, for when we were with you we used to give you this order, "If a man refuses to work, neither let him eat." For we hear that there are some amongst you whose behaviour is that of truants from work, who are busy in nothing except in being busybodies. To such we give orders and exhort them in the Lord Jesus Christ that they should quietly go on working and so eat their bread. Brothers, don't grow tired of doing the fine thing. If anyone does not obey the word we send to you through this letter, mark him; don't associate with him that he may be shamed. Don't reckon him as an enemy, but give him advice as a brother.<p/>May the Lord of peace himself give you peace always and everywhere. The Lord be with you all.<p/>Here is the greeting of me Paul in my own hand-writing, which is the sign of genuineness in every letter. This is how I write. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.<p/></i><p/>Here Paul is dealing, as he had to deal in the previous letter, with the situation produced by those who took the wrong attitude to the Second Coming. There were those in Thessalonica who had given up their work and had abandoned the routine claims of every day to wait about in excited idleness for Christ to come. Paul uses a vivid word to describe them. Twice he uses the adverb ataktos (<a href='S:G813'>G813</a>) and once the verb ataktein (<a href='S:G812'>G812</a>). The word means to play truant. It occurs, for instance, in the papyri, in an apprentice's contract in which the father agrees that his son must make good any days on which he plays truant. The Thessalonians in their excited idleness were truants from work.<p/>To bring them to their senses Paul quotes his own example. All his life he was a man who worked with his hands. The Jew glorified work. "He who does not teach his son a trade," they said, "teaches him to steal." Paul was a trained Rabbi; but the Jewish law laid it down that a Rabbi must take no pay for teaching. He must have a trade and must satisfy his daily needs with the work of his hands. So we find Rabbis who were bakers, barbers, carpenters, masons and who followed all kinds of trades. The Jews believed in the dignity of honest toil; and they were sure that a scholar lost something when he became so academic and so withdrawn from life that he forgot how to work with his hands. Paul quotes a saying, "If a man refuses to work, neither let him eat." It is the refusal to work that is important. This has nothing to do with the unfortunate man who, through no fault of his own, can find no work to do. This has been called "the golden rule of work." Deissmann has the happy thought that, when Paul said this, "he was probably borrowing a bit of good old workshop morality, a maxim coined perhaps by some industrious workman as he forbade his lazy apprentice to sit down to dinner."<p/>In this we have the example of Jesus himself. He was the carpenter of Nazareth and legend has it that he made the best ox-yokes in all Palestine and that men came from all over the country to buy them. A tree is known by its fruits and a man is known by his work. Once a man was negotiating to buy a house and bought it without even seeing it. He was asked why he took such a risk; his answer was, "I know the man who built that house and he builds his Christianity in with the bricks." The Christian should be a more conscientious workman than anyone else.<p/>Paul disliked the busybody intensely. There may be greater sins than gossip but there is none which does more damage in the Church. A man who is doing his own work with his whole strength will have enough to do without being maliciously interested in the affairs of others.<p/>Paul commands that those who disregard his instructions must be dealt with by the community. But they are to be dealt with not as enemies but as brothers. The discipline given by a man who contemptuously looks down upon the sinner and speaks to hurt may terrify and wound but it seldom amends. It is more likely to produce resentment than reformation. When Christian discipline is necessary it is to be given as by a brother to a brother, not in anger, still less in contempt but always in love.<p/>At the end Paul adds his autograph to authenticate his letter. "Look, he says, "this is what my handwriting is like. Mark it, so that you will know it again." And then, with the truth expounded, with praise and rebuke lovingly intermingled, he commends the Thessalonian Church to the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.<p/>FURTHER READINGS<p/>Thessalonians<p/>J. E. Frame, Thessalonians (ICC; G)<p/>G. Milligan, St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians (MmC; G)<p/>W. Neil, The Epistles of Paul to the Thessalonians (MC; E)<p/>Abbreviations<p/>CGT: Cambridge Greek Testament<p/>ICC: International Critical Commentary<p/>MC: Moffatt Commentary<p/>MmC: Macmillan Commentary<p/>TC: Tyndale Commentary<p/>E: English Text<p/>G: Greek Text 


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 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the royal command of God, our Saviour, and of Jesus Christ, our Hope, writes this letter to Timothy, his true child in the faith. Grace, mercy and peace be to you from our Lord Jesus Christ.<p/></i><p/>Never a man magnified his office as Paul did. He did not magnify it in pride; he magnified it in wonder that God had chosen him for a task like that. Twice in the opening words of this letter he lays down the greatness of his privilege.<p/>(i) First, he calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus. Apostle is the Greek word apostolos (<a href='S:G652'>G652</a>), from the verb apostellein (<a href='S:G649'>G649</a>) which means to send out; an apostolos (<a href='S:G652'>G652</a>) was one who was sent out. As far back as Herodotus it means an envoy, an ambassador, one who is sent out to represent his country and his king. Paul always regarded himself as the envoy and ambassador of Christ. And, in truth, that is the office of every Christian. It is the first duty of every ambassador to form a liaison between the country to which he is sent and the country from which he has come. He is the connecting link. And the first duty of every Christian is to be a connecting link between his fellow-men and Jesus Christ.<p/>(ii) Secondly, he says that he is an apostle by the royal command of God. The word he uses is epitage (<a href='S:G2003'>G2003</a>). This is the word Greek uses for the injunctions which some inviolable law lays on a man; for the royal command which comes to a man from the king; and above all for the instructions which come to a man either directly or by some oracle from God. For instance, a man in an inscription dedicates an altar to the goddess Cybele, kat' (<a href='S:G2596'>G2596</a>) epitagen (<a href='S:G2003'>G2003</a>), in accordance with the command of the goddess, which, he tells us, had come to him in a dream. Paul thought of himself as a man holding the king's commission.<p/>If any man can arrive at this consciousness of being despatched by God, a new splendour enters into life. However humble his part may be in it, he is on royal service.<p/>"Life can never be dull again<p/>When once we've thrown our windows open wide<p/>And seen the mighty world that lies outside,<p/>And whispered to ourselves this wondrous thing,<p/>'We're wanted for the business of the King!'"<p/>It is always a privilege to do even the most menial things for someone whom we love and respect and admire. All his life the Christian is on the business of the King.<p/>Paul goes on to give to God and to Jesus two great titles.<p/>He speaks of God, our Saviour. This is a new way of speaking. We do not find this title for God in any of Paul's earlier letters. There are two backgrounds from which it comes.<p/>(a) It comes from an Old Testament background. It is Moses' charge against Israel that Jeshurun "forsook God who made him, and scoffed at the Rock of his Salvation" (<a href='B:50 32:15'>Deu 32:15</a>). The Psalmist sings of how the good man will receive righteousness from the God of his salvation (<a href='B:230 24:5'>Psa 24:5</a>). It is Mary's song, "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour" (<a href='B:490 1:46-47'>Luk 1:46-47</a>). When Paul called God Saviour, he was going back to an idea which had always been dear to Israel.<p/>(b) There is a pagan background. It so happened that just at this time the title soter (<a href='S:G4990'>G4990</a>), Saviour, was much in use. Men had always used it. In the old days the Romans had called Scipio, their great general, "our hope and our salvation." But at this very time it was the title which the Greeks gave to Aesculapius, the god of healing. And it was one of the titles which Nero, the Roman Emperor, had taken to himself. So in this opening sentence Paul is taking the title which was much on the lips of a seeking and a wistful world and giving it to the only person to whom it belonged by right.<p/>We must never forget that Paul called God Saviour. It is possible to take a quite wrong idea of the Atonement. Sometimes people speak of it in a way which indicates that something Jesus did pacified the anger of God. The idea they give is that God was bent on our destruction and that somehow his wrath was turned to love by Jesus. Nowhere in the New Testament is there any support for that. It was because God so loved the world that he sent Jesus into the world (<a href='B:500 3:16'>Joh 3:16</a>). God is Saviour. We must never think or preach or teach of a God who had to be pacified and persuaded into loving us, for everything begins from his love.<p/><b>THE HOPE OF THE WORLD</b> (<a href='B:610 1:1-2'>1Ti 1:1-2</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Paul uses a title which was to become one of the great titles of Jesus--"Christ Jesus, our hope." Long ago the Psalmist had demanded of himself: "Why are you cast down, O my soul?" And he had answered: "Hope in God" (<a href='B:230 43:5'>Psa 43:5</a>). Paul himself speaks of "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (<a href='B:580 1:27'>Col 1:27</a>). John speaks of the dazzling prospect which confronted the Christian, the prospect of being like Christ; and goes on to say: "Every one who thus hopes purifies himself as he is pure" (<a href='B:690 3:2-3'>1Jn 3:2-3</a>).<p/>In the early Church this was to become one of the most precious titles of Christ. Ignatius of Antioch, when on his way to execution in Rome, writes to the Church in Ephesus: "Be of good cheer in God the Father and in Jesus Christ our common hope" (Ignatius: To the Ephesians 21:2). Polycarp writes: "Let us therefore persevere in our hope and the earnest of our righteousness, who is Jesus Christ" (Epistle of Polycarp 8).<p/>(i) Men found in Christ the hope of moral victory and of self-conquest. The ancient world knew its sin. Epictetus had spoken wistfully of "our weakness in necessary things." Seneca had said that "we hate our vices and love them at the same time." He said, "We have not stood bravely enough by our good resolutions; despite our will and resistance we have lost our innocence. Nor is it only that we have acted amiss; we shall do so to the end." Persius, the Roman poet, wrote poignantly: "Let the guilty see virtue, and pine that they have lost her for ever." Persius talks of "filthy Natta benumbed by vice." The ancient world knew its moral helplessness only too well; and Christ came, not only telling men what was right, but giving them the power to do it. Christ gave to men who had lost it the hope of moral victory instead of defeat.<p/>(ii) Men found in Christ the hope of victory over circumstances. Christianity came into the world in an age of the most terrible personal insecurity. When Tacitus, the Roman historian, came to write the history of that very age in which the Christian Church came into being, he began by saying, "I am entering upon the history of a period rich in disaster, gloomy with wars, rent with seditions; nay, savage in its very hours of peace. Four emperors perished by the sword; there were three civil wars; there were more with foreigners, and some had the character of both at once... Rome wasted by fires; its oldest temples burned; the very capitol set in flames by Roman hands; the defilement of sacred rites; adultery in high places; the sea crowded with exiles; island rocks drenched with murder; yet wilder was the frenzy in Rome; nobility, wealth, the refusal of office, its acceptance, everything was a crime, and virtue was the surest way to ruin. Nor were the rewards of the informers less odious than their deeds. One found his spoils in a priesthood or a consulate; another in a provincial governorship, another behind the throne. All was one delirium of hate and terror; slaves were bribed to betray their masters, freedmen their patrons; and he who had no foe was betrayed by his friend." (Tacitus: Histories 1, 2). As Gilbert Murray said, the whole age was suffering from "the failure of nerve." Men were longing for some ring-wall of defence against "the advancing chaos of the world." It was Christ who in such times gave men the strength to live, and the courage, if need be, to die. In the certainty that nothing on earth could separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus, men found victory over the terrors of the age.<p/>(iii) Men found in Christ the hope of victory over death. They found in him, at one and the same time, strength for mortal things and the immortal hope. Christ, our hope, was--and still should be--the battle-cry of the Church.<p/><b>TIMOTHY, MY SON</b> (<a href='B:610 1:1-2'>1Ti 1:1-2</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> It is to Timothy that this letter is sent, and Paul was never able to speak of him without affection in his voice.<p/>Timothy was a native of Lystra in the province of Galatia. It was a Roman colony; it called itself "the most brilliant colony of Lystra," but in reality it was a little place at the ends of the civilized earth. Its importance was that there was a Roman garrison quartered there to keep control of the wild tribes of the Isaurian mountains which lay beyond. It was on the first missionary journey that Paul and Barnabas arrived there (<a href='B:510 14:8-21'>Act 14:8-21</a>). At that time there is no mention of Timothy; but it has been suggested that, when Paul was in Lystra, he found a lodging in Timothy's home, in view of the fact that he knew well the faith and devotion of Timothy's mother Eunice and of his grandmother Lois (<a href='B:620 1:5'>2Ti 1:5</a>).<p/>On that first visit Timothy must have been very young, but the Christian faith laid hold upon him, and Paul became his hero. It was at Paul's visit to Lystra on the second missionary journey that life began for Timothy (<a href='B:510 16:1-3'>Act 16:1-3</a>). Young as he was, he had become one of the ornaments of the Christian Church in Lystra. There was such a charm and enthusiasm in the lad that all men spoke well of him. To Paul, he seemed the very man to be his assistant. Maybe even then he had dreams that this lad was the very person to train to take up his work when his day was over.<p/>Timothy was the child of a mixed marriage; his mother was a Jewess, and his father a Greek (<a href='B:510 16:1'>Act 16:1</a>). Paul circumcised him. It was not that Paul was a slave of the law, or that he saw in circumcision any special virtue; but he knew well that if Timothy was to work amongst the Jews, there would be an initial prejudice against him if he was uncircumcised, and so he took this step as a practical measure to increase Timothy's usefulness as an evangelist.<p/>From that time forward Timothy was Paul's constant companion. He was left behind at Beroea with Silas when Paul escaped to Athens, and later joined him there (<a href='B:510 17:14-15'>Act 17:14-15</a>; <a href='B:510 18:5'>Act 18:5</a>). He was sent as Paul's emissary to Macedonia (<a href='B:510 19:22'>Act 19:22</a>). He was there when the collection from the Churches was being taken to Jerusalem (<a href='B:510 20:4'>Act 20:4</a>). He was with Paul in Corinth when Paul wrote his letter to Rome (<a href='B:520 16:21'>Rom 16:21</a>). He was Paul's emissary to Corinth when there was trouble in that unruly Church (<a href='B:530 4:17'>1Co 4:17</a>; <a href='B:530 16:10'>1Co 16:10</a>). He was with Paul when he wrote 2 Corinthians (<a href='B:540 1:1'>2Co 1:1</a>; <a href='B:540 1:19'>2Co 1:19</a>). It was Timothy whom Paul sent to see how things were going in Thessalonica and he was with Paul when he wrote his letter to that Church (<a href='B:590 1:1'>1Th 1:1</a>; <a href='B:590 3:2'>1Th 3:2</a>; <a href='B:590 3:6'>1Th 3:6</a>). He was with Paul in prison when he wrote to Philippi, and Paul was planning to send him to Philippi as his representative (Php_1:1 ; Php_2:19). He was with Paul when he wrote to the Church at Colossae and to Philemon (<a href='B:580 1:1'>Col 1:1</a>; <a href='B:640 1:1'>Phm 1:1</a>). Constantly Timothy was by Paul's side, and when Paul had a difficult job to do Timothy was the man sent to do it.<p/>Over and over again Paul's voice vibrates with affection when he speaks of Timothy. When he is sending him to that sadly divided Church at Corinth, he writes: "I have sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord" (<a href='B:530 4:17'>1Co 4:17</a>). When he is planning to send him to Philippi, he writes: "I have no one like him.... As a son with a father he has served with me in the gospel" (Php_2:20 ; Php_2:22). Here he calls him "his true son." The word that he uses for "true" is gnesios (<a href='S:G1103'>G1103</a>). It has two meanings. It was the normal word for a legitimate child in contradistinction to illegitimate. It was the word for genuine, as opposed to counterfeit.<p/>Timothy was the man whom Paul could trust and could send anywhere, knowing that he would go. Happy indeed is the leader who possesses a lieutenant like that. Timothy is our example of how we should serve in the faith. Christ and his Church need servants like that.<p/><b>GRACE, MERCY AND PEACE</b> (<a href='B:610 1:1-2'>1Ti 1:1-2</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Paul always began his letters with a blessing (<a href='B:520 1:7'>Rom 1:7</a>; <a href='B:530 1:3'>1Co 1:3</a>; <a href='B:540 1:2'>2Co 1:2</a>; <a href='B:550 1:3'>Gal 1:3</a>; <a href='B:560 1:2'>Eph 1:2</a>; Php_1:2 ; <a href='B:580 1:2'>Col 1:2</a>; <a href='B:590 1:1'>1Th 1:1</a>; <a href='B:600 1:2'>2Th 1:2</a>; <a href='B:640 1:3'>Phm 1:3</a>). In all these other letters only Grace and Peace occur. It is only in the letters to Timothy that Mercy is used (<a href='B:620 1:2'>2Ti 1:2</a>; <a href='B:630 1:4'>Tit 1:4</a>). Let us look at these three great words.<p/>(i) In Grace there are always three dominant ideas.<p/>(a) In classical Greek the word means outward grace or favour, beauty, winsomeness, sweetness. Usually, although not always, it is applied to persons. The English word charm comes near to expressing its meaning. Grace is characteristically a lovely and a winsome thing.<p/>(b) In the New Testament there is always the idea of sheer generosity. Grace is something unearned and undeserved. It is opposed to that which is a debt. Paul says that if it is a case of earning things, the reward is not a matter of grace, but of debt (<a href='B:520 4:4'>Rom 4:4</a>). It is opposed to works. Paul says that God's election of his chosen people is not the consequence of works, but of grace (<a href='B:520 11:6'>Rom 11:6</a>).<p/>(c) In the New Testament there is always the idea of sheer universality. Again and again Paul uses the word grace in connection with the reception of the Gentiles into the family of God. He thanks God for the grace given to the Corinthians in Jesus Christ (<a href='B:530 1:4'>1Co 1:4</a>). He talks of the grace of God bestowed on the Churches of Macedonia (<a href='B:540 8:1'>2Co 8:1</a>). He talks of the Galatians being called into the grace of Christ (<a href='B:550 1:6'>Gal 1:6</a>). The hope which came to the Thessalonians came through grace (<a href='B:600 2:16'>2Th 2:16</a>). It was God's grace which made Paul an apostle to the Gentiles (<a href='B:530 15:10'>1Co 15:10</a>). It was by the grace of God that he moved amongst the Corinthians (<a href='B:540 1:12'>2Co 1:12</a>). It was by grace that God called him and separated him from his mother's womb (<a href='B:550 1:15'>Gal 1:15</a>). It is the grace given to him by God which enables him to write boldly to the Church at Rome (<a href='B:520 15:15'>Rom 15:15</a>). To Paul the great demonstration of the grace of God was the reception of the Gentiles into the Church and his apostleship to them.<p/>Grace is a lovely thing; it is a free thing; and it is a universal thing. As F. J. Hort wrote so beautifully: "Grace is a comprehensive word, gathering up all that may be supposed to be expressed in the smile of a heavenly king, looking down upon his people."<p/>(ii) Peace was the normal Jewish word of greeting, and, in Hebrew thought, it expresses, not simply the negative absence of trouble, but "the most comprehensive form of well-being." It is everything which makes for a man's highest good. It is the state a man is in when he is within the love of God. F. J. Hort writes: "Peace is the antithesis to every kind of conflict and war and molestation, to enmity without and distraction within."<p/>"Bowed down beneath a load of sin,<p/>By Satan sorely pressed,<p/>By war without and fears within,<p/>I come to thee for rest."<p/>(iii) Mercy is the new word in the apostolic blessing. In Greek the word is eleos (<a href='S:G1656'>G1656</a>), and in Hebrew chesed (<a href='S:H2617'>H2617</a>). Now chesedh is the word which is often in the Old Testament translated loving-kindness; and when Paul prayed for mercy on Timothy, he is saying, to put it very simply, "Timothy, may God be good to you." But there is more to it than that. Chesed (<a href='S:H2617'>H2617</a>) is used in the Psalms no fewer than one hundred and twenty-seven times. And time and time again it has the meaning of help in time of need. It denotes, as Parry puts it, "God's active intervention to help." As Hort puts it, "It is the coming down of the Most High to help the helpless." In <a href='B:230 40:11'>Psa 40:11</a> the Psalmist rejoices, "Thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness ever preserve me." In <a href='B:230 57:3'>Psa 57:3</a> he says, "He will send from heaven and save me... God will send forth his steadfast love and his faithfulness." In <a href='B:230 86:14-16'>Psa 86:14-16</a> he thinks of the forces of the evil men which are arrayed against him, and comforts himself with the thought that God is "abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." It is by God's abundant mercy that he has given us the living hope of the resurrection (<a href='B:670 1:3'>1Pe 1:3</a>). The Gentiles should glorify God for that mercy which has rescued them from sin and hopelessness (<a href='B:520 15:9'>Rom 15:9</a>). God's mercy is God active to save. It may well be that Paul added Mercy to his two usual words, Grace and Peace, because Timothy was up against it and he wanted in one word to tell him that the Most High was the help of the helpless.<p/><b>ERROR AND HERESY</b> (<a href='B:610 1:3-7'>1Ti 1:3-7</a>)


text:
 I am writing to you now to reinforce the plea that I already made to you, when I urged you to stay in Ephesus while I went to Macedonia, that you might pass on the order to some of the people there, not to teach erroneous novelties, nor to give their attention to idle tales and endless genealogies, which only succeed in producing empty speculations rather than the effective administration of God's people, which should be based on faith. The instruction which I gave you is designed to produce love which issues from a pure heart, a good conscience and an undissembling faith. But some of these people of whom I am talking have never even tried to find the right road, and have turned aside out of it to empty and useless discussions, in their claim to become teachers of the law, although they do not know what they are talking about, nor do they realize the real meaning of the things about which they dogmatize.<p/></i><p/>It is clear that at the back of the Pastoral Epistles there is some heresy which is endangering the Church. Right at the beginning it will be well to try to see what this heresy is. We will therefore collect the facts about it now.<p/>This very passage brings us face to face with two of its great characteristics. It dealt in idle tales and endless genealogies. These two things were not peculiar to this heresy but were deeply engrained in the thought of the ancient world.<p/>First, the idle tales. One of the characteristics of the ancient world was that the poets and even the historians loved to work out romantic and fictitious tales about the foundation of cities and of families. They would tell how some god came to earth and founded the city or took in marriage some mortal maid and founded a family. The ancient world was full of stories like that.<p/>Second, the endless genealogies. The ancient world had a passion for genealogies. We can see that even in the Old Testament with its chapters of names and in the New Testament with the genealogies of Jesus with which Matthew and Luke begin their gospels. A man like Alexander the Great had a completely artificial pedigree constructed in which he traced his lineage back on the one side to Achilles and Andromache and on the other to Perseus and Hercules.<p/>It would be the easiest thing in the world for Christianity to get lost in endless and fabulous stories about origins and in elaborate and imaginary genealogies. That was a danger which was inherent in the situation in which Christian thought was developing.<p/>It was peculiarly threatening from two directions.<p/>It was threatening from the Jewish direction. To the Jews there was no book in the world like the Old Testament. Their scholars spent a lifetime studying it and expounding it. In the Old Testament many chapters and many sections are long genealogies; and one of the favourite occupations of the Jewish scholars was to construct an imaginary and edifying biography for every name in the list! A man could go on for ever doing that; and it may be that that was what was partly in Paul's mind. He may be saying, "When you ought to be working at the Christian life, you are working out imaginary biographies and genealogies. You are wasting your time on elegant fripperies, when you should be getting down to life and living." This may be a warning to us never to allow Christian thinking to get lost in speculations which do not matter.<p/><b>THE SPECULATIONS OF THE GREEKS</b> (<a href='B:610 1:3-7'>1Ti 1:3-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> But this danger came with an even greater threat from the Greek side. At this time in history there was developing a Greek line of thought which came to be known as Gnosticism. We find it specially in the background of the Pastoral Epistles, the Letter to the Colossians and the Fourth Gospel.<p/>Gnosticism was entirely speculative. It began with the problem of the origin of sin and of suffering. If God is altogether good, he could not have created them. How then did they get into the world? The Gnostic answer was that creation was not creation out of nothing; before time began matter existed. They believed that this matter was essentially imperfect, an evil thing; and out of this essentially evil matter the world was created.<p/>No sooner had they got this length than they ran into another difficulty. If matter is essentially evil and God is essentially good, God could not himself have touched this matter. So they began another set of speculations. They said that God put out an emanation, and that this emanation put out another emanation, and the second emanation put out a third emanation and so on and on until there came into being an emanation so distant from God that he could handle matter; and that it was not God but this emanation who created the world.<p/>They went further. They held that each successive emanation knew less about God so that there came a stage in the series of emanations when the emanations were completely ignorant of him and, more, there was a final stage when the emanations were not only ignorant of God but actively hostile to him. So they arrived at the thought that the god who created the world was quite ignorant of and hostile to the true God. Later on they went even further and identified the God of the Old Testament with this creating god, and the God of the New Testament with the true God.<p/>They further provided each one of the emanations with a complete biography. And so they built up an elaborate mythology of gods and emanations, each with his story and his biography and his genealogy. There is no doubt that the ancient world was riddled with that kind of thinking; and that it even entered the Church itself. It made Jesus merely the greatest of the emanations, the one closest to God. It classed him as the highest link in the endless chain between God and man.<p/>This Gnostic line of thought had certain characteristics which appear all through the Pastoral Epistles as the characteristics of those whose heresies were threatening the Church and the purity of the faith.<p/>(i) Gnosticism was obviously highly speculative, and it was therefore intensely intellectually snobbish. It believed that all this intellectual speculation was quite beyond the mental grasp of ordinary people and was for a chosen few, the elite of the Church. So Timothy is warned against "godless chatter and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge" (<a href='B:610 6:20'>1Ti 6:20</a>). He is warned against a religion of speculative questions instead of humble faith (<a href='B:610 1:4'>1Ti 1:4</a>). He is warned against the man who is proud of his intellect but really knows nothing and dotes about questions and strifes of words (<a href='B:610 6:4'>1Ti 6:4</a>). He is told to shun "godless chatter, for they can produce only ungodliness (<a href='B:620 2:16'>2Ti 2:16</a>). He is told to avoid "stupid, senseless controversies" which in the end can only engender strife (<a href='B:620 2:23'>2Ti 2:23</a>). Further, the Pastoral Epistles go out of their way to stress the fact that this idea of an intellectual aristocracy is quite wrong, for God's love is universal. God wants all men to be saved and all men to come to a knowledge of the truth (<a href='B:610 2:4'>1Ti 2:4</a>). God is the Saviour of all men, especially those who believe (<a href='B:610 4:10'>1Ti 4:10</a>). The Christian Church would have nothing to do with any kind of faith which was founded on intellectual speculation and set up an arrogant intellectual aristocracy.<p/>(ii) Gnosticism was concerned with this long series of emanations. It gave to each of them a biography and a pedigree and an importance in the chain between God and men. These gnostics were concerned with "endless genealogies" (<a href='B:610 1:4'>1Ti 1:4</a>). They went in for "godless and silly myths" about them (<a href='B:610 4:7'>1Ti 4:7</a>). They turned their ears away from the truth to myths (<a href='B:620 4:4'>2Ti 4:4</a>). They dealt in fables like the Jewish myths (<a href='B:630 1:14'>Tit 1:14</a>). Worst of all, they thought in terms of two gods and of Jesus as one of a whole series of mediators between God and man; whereas "there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (<a href='B:610 2:5'>1Ti 2:5</a>). There is only one King of ages, immortal, invisible, there is only one God (<a href='B:610 1:17'>1Ti 1:17</a>). Christianity had to repudiate a religion which took their unique place from God and from Jesus Christ.<p/><b>THE ETHICS OF HERESY</b> (<a href='B:610 1:3-7'>1Ti 1:3-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The danger of Gnosticism was not only intellectual. It had serious moral and ethical consequences. We must remember that its basic belief was that matter was essentially evil and spirit alone was good. That issued in two opposite results.<p/>(i) If matter is evil, the body is evil; and the body must be despised and held down. Therefore Gnosticism could and did issue in a rigid asceticism. It forbade men to marry, for the instincts of the body were to be suppressed. It laid down strict food laws, for the needs of the body must as far as possible be eliminated. So the Pastorals speak of those who forbid to marry and who command to abstain from meats (<a href='B:610 4:3'>1Ti 4:3</a>). The answer to these people is that everything which God has created is good and is to be received with thanksgiving (<a href='B:610 4:4'>1Ti 4:4</a>). The Gnostic looked on creation as an evil thing, the work of an evil god; the Christian looks on creation as a noble thing, the gift of a good God. The Christian lives in a world where all things are pure; the Gnostic lived in a world where all things were defiled (<a href='B:630 1:15'>Tit 1:15</a>).<p/>(ii) But Gnosticism could issue in precisely the opposite ethical belief. If the body is evil, it does not matter what a man does with it. Therefore, let him sate his appetites. These things are of no importance, therefore a man can use his body in the most licentious way and it makes no difference. So the Pastorals speak of those who lead away weak women until they are laden with sin and the victims of all kinds of lusts (<a href='B:620 3:6'>2Ti 3:6</a>). Such men profess to know God, but they deny him by their deeds (<a href='B:630 1:16'>Tit 1:16</a>). They used their religious beliefs as an excuse for immorality.<p/>(iii) Gnosticism had still another consequence. The Christian believes in the resurrection of the body. That is not to say that he ever believed that we are resurrected with this mortal, human body; but he always believed that after resurrection from the dead a man would have a spiritual body, provided by God. Paul discusses this whole question in <a href='B:530 15:1-58'>1Co 15:1-58</a>. The Gnostic held that there was no such thing as the resurrection of the body (<a href='B:620 2:18'>2Ti 2:18</a>). After death a man would be a kind of disembodied spirit. The basic difference is that the Gnostic believed in the body's destruction; the Christian believes in its redemption. The Gnostic believed in what he would call soul salvation; the Christian believes in whole salvation.<p/>So behind the Pastoral Epistles there are these dangerous heretics, who gave their lives to intellectual speculations, who saw this as an evil world and the creating god as evil, who put between the world and God an endless series of emanations and lesser gods and spent their time equipping each of them with endless fables and genealogies, who reduced Jesus to the position of a link in a chain and took away his uniqueness, who lived either in a rigorous asceticism or an unbridled licentiousness, who denied the resurrection of the body. It was their heretical beliefs that the Pastorals were written to combat.<p/><b>THE MIND OF THE HERETIC</b> (<a href='B:610 1:3-7'>1Ti 1:3-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> In this passage there is a clear picture of the mind of the dangerous heretic. There is a kind of heresy in which a man differs from orthodox belief because he has honestly thought things out and cannot agree with it. He does not take any pride in being different; he is different simply because he has to be. Such a heresy does not spoil a man's character; it may in fact enhance his character, because he has really thought out his faith and is not living on a second-hand orthodoxy. But that is not the heretic whose picture is drawn here. Here are distinguished five characteristics of the dangerous heretic.<p/>(i) He is driven by the desire for novelty. He is like someone who must be in the latest fashion and must undergo the latest craze. He despises old things for no better reason than that they are old, and desires new things for no better reason than that they are new. Christianity has always the problem of presenting old truth in a new way. The truth does not change, but every age must find its own way of presenting it. Every teacher and preacher must talk to men in language which they understand. The old truth and the new presentation go ever hand in hand.<p/>(ii) He exalts the mind at the expense of the heart. His conception of religion is speculation and not experience. Christianity has never demanded that a man should stop thinking for himself, but it does demand that his thinking should be dominated by a personal experience of Jesus Christ.<p/>(iii) He deals in argument instead of action. He is more interested in abstruse discussion than in the effective administration of the household of the faith. He forgets that the truth is not only something which a man accepts with his mind, but is also something which he translates into action. Long ago the distinction between the Greek and the Jew was drawn. The Greek loved argument for the sake of argument; there was nothing that he liked better than to sit with a group of friends and indulge in a series of mental acrobatics and enjoy "the stimulus of a mental hike." But he was not specially interested in reaching conclusions, and in evolving a principle of action. The Jew, too, liked argument; but he wished every argument to end in a decision which demanded action. There is always a danger of heresy when we fall in love with words and forget deeds, for deeds are the acid test by which every argument must be tested.<p/>(iv) He is moved by arrogance rather than by humility. He looks down with a certain contempt on simple-minded people who cannot follow his flights of intellectual speculation. He regards those who do not reach his own conclusions as ignorant fools. The Christian has somehow to combine an immovable certainty with a gentle humility.<p/>(v) He is guilty of dogmatism without knowledge. He does not really know what he is talking about nor really understand the significance of the things about which he dogmatizes. The strange thing about religious argument is that everyone thinks that he has a right to express a dogmatic opinion. In all other fields we demand that a person should have a certain knowledge before he lays down the law. But there are those who dogmatize about the Bible and its teaching although they have never even tried to find out what the experts in language and history have said. It may well be that the Christian cause has suffered more from ignorant dogmatism than from anything else.<p/>When we think of the characteristics of those who were troubling the Church at Ephesus we can see that their descendants are still with us.<p/><b>THE MIND OF THE CHRISTIAN THINKER</b> (<a href='B:610 1:3-7'>1Ti 1:3-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> As this passage draws the picture of the thinker who disturbs the Church, it also draws the picture of the really Christian thinker. He, too, has five characteristics.<p/>(i) His thinking is based on faith. Faith means taking God at his word; it means believing that he is as Jesus proclaimed him to be. That is to say, the Christian thinker begins from the principle that Jesus Christ has given the full revelation of God.<p/>(ii) His thinking is motivated by love. Paul's whole purpose is to produce love. To think in love will always save us from certain things. It will save us from arrogant thinking. It will save us from contemptuous thinking. It will save us from condemning either that with which we do not agree, or that which we do not understand. It will save us from expressing our views in such a way that we hurt other people. Love saves us from destructive thinking and destructive speaking. To think in love is always to think in sympathy. The man who argues in love argues not to defeat his opponent, but to win him.<p/>(iii) His thinking comes from a pure heart. Here the word used is very significant. It is katharos (<a href='S:G2513'>G2513</a>), which originally simply meant clean as opposed to soiled or dirty. Later it came to have certain most suggestive uses. It was used of corn that has been winnowed and cleansed of all chaff. It was used of an army which had been purified of all cowardly and undisciplined soldiers until there was nothing left but first-class fighting men. It was used of something which was without any debasing admixture. So, then, a pure heart is a heart whose motives are absolutely pure and absolutely unmixed. In the heart of the Christian thinker there is no desire to show how clever he is, no desire to win a purely debating victory, no desire to show up the ignorance of his opponent. His only desire is to help and to illumine and to lead nearer to God. The Christian thinker is moved only by love of truth and love for men.<p/>(iv) His thinking comes from a good conscience. The Greek word for conscience is suneidesis (<a href='S:G4893'>G4893</a>). It literally means a knowing with. The real meaning of conscience is a knowing with oneself. To have a good conscience is to be able to look in the face the knowledge which one shares with no one but oneself and not be ashamed. Emerson remarked of Seneca that he said the loveliest things, if only he had the right to say them. The Christian thinker is the man whose thoughts and whose deeds give him the right to say what he does--and that is the most acid test of all.<p/>(v) The Christian thinker is the man of undissembling faith. The phrase literally means the faith in which there is no hypocrisy. That simply means that the great characteristic of the Christian thinker is sincerity. He is sincere both in his desire to find the truth--and in his desire to communicate it.<p/><b>THOSE WHO NEED NO LAW</b> (<a href='B:610 1:8-11'>1Ti 1:8-11</a>)


text:
 We know that the law is good, if a man uses it legitimately, in the awareness that the law was not instituted to deal with good men, but with the lawless and the undisciplined, the irreverent and the sinners, the impious and the polluted, those who have sunk so low that they strike their fathers and their mothers, murderers, fornicators, homosexuals, slave-dealers and kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and all those who are guilty of anything which is the reverse of sound teaching, that teaching which is in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God, that gospel which has been entrusted to me.<p/></i><p/>This passage begins with what was a favourite thought in the ancient world. The place of the law is to deal with evil-doers. The good man does not need any law to control his actions or to threaten him with punishments; and in a world of good men there would be no need for laws at all.<p/>Antiphanes, the Greek, had it: "He who does no wrong needs no law." It was the claim of Aristotle that "philosophy enables a man to do without external control that which others do because of fear of the laws." Ambrose, the great Christian bishop, wrote: "The just man has the law of his own mind, of his own equity and of his own justice as his standard; and therefore he is not recalled from fault by terror of punishment, but by the rule of honour." Pagan and Christian alike regarded true goodness as something which had its source in a man's heart; as something which was not dependent on the rewards and punishments of the law.<p/>But in one thing the pagan and the Christian differed. The pagan looked back to an ancient golden time when all things were good and no law was needed. Ovid, the Roman poet, drew one of the most famous pictures of that ancient golden time (Metamorphoses 1: 90-112). "Golden was that first age, which with no one to compel, without a law, of its own will, kept faith and did the right. There was no fear of punishment, no threatening words were to be read on brazen tablets; no suppliant throng gazed fearfully upon the judge's face; but without judges men lived secure. Not yet had the pine tree, felled on its native mountains, descended thence into the watery plain to visit other lands; men knew no shores except their own. Nor, yet were cities begirt with steep moats; there were no trumpets of straight, no horns of curving brass, no swords or helmets. There was no need at all of armed men, for nations, secure from war's alarms, passed the years in gentle peace." Tacitus, the Roman historian, had the same picture (Annals 3: 26). "In the earliest times, when men had as yet no evil passions, they led blameless, guiltless lives, without either punishment or restraint. Led by their own nature to pursue none but virtuous ends, they required no rewards; and as they desired nothing contrary to the right, there was no need for pains and penalties." The ancient world looked back and longed for the days that were gone. But the Christian faith does not look back to a lost golden age; it looks forward to the day when the only law will be the love of Christ within a man's heart, for it is certain that the day of law cannot end until the day of love dawns.<p/>There should be only one controlling factor in the lives of every one of us. Our goodness should come, not from fear of the law, not even from fear of judgment, but from fear of disappointing the love of Christ and of grieving the fatherly heart of God. The Christian's dynamic comes from the fact that he knows sin is not only breaking God's law but also breaking his heart. It is not the law of God but the love of God which constrains us.<p/><b>THOSE WHOM THE LAW CONDEMNS</b> (<a href='B:610 1:8-11'>1Ti 1:8-11</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> In an ideal state, when the Kingdom comes, there will be no necessity for any law other than the love of God within a man's heart; but as things are, the case is very different. And here Paul sets out a catalogue of sins which the law must control and condemn. The interest of the passage is that it shows us the background against which Christianity grew up. This list of sins is in fact a description of the world in which the early Christians lived and moved and had their being. Nothing shows us so well how the Christian Church was a little island of purity in a vicious world. We talk about it being hard to be a Christian in modern civilization; we have only to read a passage like this to see how infinitely harder it must have been in the circumstances in which the Church first began. Let us take this terrible list and look at the items on it.<p/>There are the lawless (anomoi, <a href='S:G459'>G459</a>). They are those who know the laws of right and wrong and break them open-eyed. No one can blame a man for breaking a law he does not know exists; but the lawless are those who deliberately violate the laws in order to satisfy their own ambitions and desires.<p/>There are the undisciplined (anupotaktoi, <a href='S:G506'>G506</a>). They are the unruly and the insubordinate, those who refuse to obey any authority. They are like soldiers who mutinously disobey the word of command. They are either too proud or too unbridled to accept any control.<p/>There are the irreverent (asebeis, <a href='S:G765'>G765</a>). Asebeis is a terrible word. It describes not indifference nor the lapse into sin. It describes "positive and active irreligion, the spirit which defiantly withholds from God that which is his right. It describes human nature "in battle array against God."<p/>There are the sinners (hamartoloi, <a href='S:G268'>G268</a>). In its commonest usage this word describes character. It can be used, for instance, of a slave who is of lax and useless character. It describes the person who has no moral standards left.<p/>There are the impious (anosioi, <a href='S:G462'>G462</a>). Hosios (<a href='S:G3741'>G3741</a>) is a noble word; it describes, as Trench puts it, "the everlasting ordinances of right, which no law or custom of man has constituted, for they are anterior to all law and custom." The things which are hosios (<a href='S:G3741'>G3741</a>) are part of the very constitution of the universe, the everlasting sanctities. The Greek, for instance, shudderingly declared that the Egyptian custom where brother could marry sister and the Persian custom where son could marry mother, were anosia, unholy. The man who is anosios (<a href='S:G462'>G462</a>) is worse than a mere lawbreaker. He is the man who violates the ultimate decencies of life.<p/>There are the polluted (bebeloi, <a href='S:G952'>G952</a>). Bebelos is an ugly word with a strange history. It originally meant simply that which can be trodden upon, in contradistinction to that which is sacred to some god and therefore inviolable. It then came to mean profane in opposition to sacred, then the man who profanes the sacred things, who desecrates God's day, disobeys his laws and belittles his worship. The man who is bebelos (<a href='S:G952'>G952</a>) soils everything he touches.<p/>There are those who strike or even kill their parents (patraloai, <a href='S:G3964'>G3964</a>, and metraloai, <a href='S:G3389'>G3389</a>). Under Roman law a son who struck his parents was liable to death. The words describe sons or daughters who are lost to gratitude, lost to respect and lost to shame. And it must ever be remembered that this most cruel of blows can be one, not upon the body, but upon the heart.<p/>There are the murderers (androphonoi, <a href='S:G409'>G409</a>), literally man-slayers. Paul is thinking of the Ten Commandments and of how breach after breach of them characterizes the heathen world. We must not think that this at least has nothing to do with us, for Jesus widened the commandment to include not only the act of murder, but also the feeling of anger against a brother.<p/>There are the fornicators and the homosexuals (pornoi, <a href='S:G4205'>G4205</a>, and arsenokoitai, <a href='S:G733'>G733</a>). It is difficult for us to realize the state of the ancient world in matters of sexual morality. It was riddled with unnatural vice. One of the extraordinary things was the actual connection of immorality and religion. The Temple of Aphrodite, goddess of love, at Corinth had attached to it a thousand priestesses who were sacred prostitutes and who at evening came down to the city streets and plied their trade. It is said that Solon was the first law-maker in Athens to legalize prostitution and that with the profits of the public brothels he instituted a new temple was built to Aphrodite, the goddess of love.<p/>E. F. Brown was a missionary in India, and in his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles he quotes an extraordinary section from the Penal Code of India. A section of that code forbade obscene representations and then went on to say: "This section does not extend to any representation or sculpture, engraved, painted or otherwise represented on or in any temple, or any car used for the conveyance of idols, or kept or used for any religious purpose." It is an extraordinary thing that in the non-Christian religions time and time again immorality and obscenity flourish under the very protection of religion. It has often been said and said truly that chastity was the one completely new virtue which Christianity brought into this world. It was no easy thing in the early days to endeavour to live according to the Christian ethic in a world like that.<p/>There are the andrapodistai (<a href='S:G405'>G405</a>). The word may either mean slave-dealers or slave-kidnappers. Possibly both meanings are involved here. It is true that slavery was an integral part of the ancient world. It is true that Aristotle declared that civilization was founded on slavery, that certain men and women existed only to perform the menial tasks of life for the convenience of the cultured classes. But even in the ancient world voices were raised against slavery. Philo spoke of slave-dealers as those "who despoil men of their most precious possession, their freedom."<p/>But this more probably refers to kidnappers of slaves. Slaves were valuable property. An ordinary slave with no special gifts fetched from 16 to 20 British pounds. A specially accomplished slave would fetch three or four times as much. Beautiful youths were in special demand as pages and cupbearers and would fetch as much as 800 or 900 British pounds. Marcus Antonius is said to have paid 2,000 British pounds for two well-matched youths who were wrongly represented to be twins. In the days when Rome was specially eager to learn the arts of Greece and slaves who were skilled in Greek literature and music and art were specially valuable, a certain Lutatius Daphnis was sold for 3,500 British pounds. The result was that frequently valuable slaves were either seduced from their masters or kidnapped. The kidnapping of specially beautiful or specially accomplished slaves was a common feature of ancient life.<p/>Finally, there are liars (pseustai, <a href='S:G5583'>G5583</a>) and perjurers (epiorkoi, <a href='S:G1965'>G1965</a>), men who did not hesitate to twist the truth to gain dishonourable ends.<p/>Here is a vivid picture of the atmosphere in which the ancient Church grew up. It was against an infection like that that the writer of the Pastorals sought to protect the Christians in his charge.<p/><b>THE CLEANSING WORD</b> (<a href='B:610 1:8-11'>1Ti 1:8-11</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Into this world came the Christian message, and this passage tells us four things about it.<p/>(i) It is sound teaching. The word used for sound (hugiainein, <a href='S:G5198'>G5198</a>) literally means health-giving. Christianity is an ethical religion. It demands from a man not only the keeping of certain ritual laws, but the living of a good life. E. F. Brown draws a comparison between it and Islam; a Mohammedan may be regarded as a very holy man if he observes certain ceremonial rituals, even though his moral life is quite unclean. He quotes a writer on Morocco: "The great blot on the creed of Islam is that precept and practice are not expected to go together, except as regards the ritual, so that a man may be notoriously wicked yet esteemed religious, having his blessing sought as that of one who has power with God, without the slightest sense of incongruity. The position of things was very well put to me one day by a Moor in Fez, who remarked: 'Do you want to know what our religion is? We purify ourselves with water while we contemplate adultery; we go to the mosque to pray and as we do so we think how best to cheat our neighbours; we give alms at the door and go back to our shop to rob; we read our Korans and go out to commit unmentionable sins; we fast and go on pilgrimage and yet we lie and kill.'" It must always be remembered that Christianity does not mean observing a ritual, even if that ritual consists of bible-reading and church-going; it means living a good life. Christianity, if it is real, is health-giving; it is the moral antiseptic which alone can cleanse life.<p/>(ii) It is a glorious gospel; that is to say, it is glorious good news. It is good news of forgiveness for past sins and of power to conquer sin in the days to come, good news of God's mercy, God's cleansing and God's grace.<p/>(iii) It is good news which comes from God. The Christian gospel is not a discovery made by man; it is something revealed by God. It does not offer only the help of man; it offers the power of God.<p/>(iv) That good news comes through men. It was entrusted to Paul to bring it to others. God makes his offer and he needs his messengers. The real Christian is the person who has himself closed with the offer of God and has realized that he cannot keep such good news to himself but must share it with others who have not yet found it.<p/><b>SAVED TO SERVE</b> (<a href='B:610 1:12-17'>1Ti 1:12-17</a>)


text:
 I give thanks to Jesus Christ, our Lord, who has filled me with his power, that he showed that he believed that he could trust me, by appointing me to his service, although I was formerly an insulter, a persecutor and a man of insolent and brutal violence. But I received mercy from him, because it was in ignorance that I acted thus, in the days when I did not believe. But the grace of our Lord rose higher than my sin, and I found it in the faith and love of those whose lives are lived in Jesus Christ. This is a saying on which we can rely, and which we are completely bound to accept, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am chief. This was why I received mercy--so that in me Jesus Christ might display all that patience of his, so that I might be the first outline sketch of those who would one day come to believe in him, that they might find eternal life. To the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, to the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.<p/></i><p/>This passage begins with a very paean of thanksgiving. There were four tremendous things for which Paul wished to thank Jesus Christ.<p/>(i) He thanked him because he chose him. Paul never had the feeling that he had chosen Christ, but always that Christ had chosen him. It was as if, when he was heading straight for destruction, Jesus Christ had laid his hand upon his shoulder and arrested him in the way. It was as if, when he was busy throwing away his life, Jesus Christ had suddenly brought him to his senses. In the days of the war I knew a Polish airman. He had crowded more thrilling hairbreadth escapes from death and from worse into a few years than the vast majority of men do into a lifetime. Sometimes he would tell the story of escape from occupied Europe, of parachute descents from the air, of rescue from the sea, and at the end of this amazing odyssey, he would always say, with a look of wonder in his eyes: "And now I am God's man." That is how Paul felt; he was Christ's man for Christ had chosen him.<p/>(ii) He thanked him because he trusted him. It was to Paul an amazing thing, that he, the arch-persecutor, had been chosen as the missionary of Christ. It was not only that Jesus Christ had forgiven him; it was that Christ trusted him. Sometimes we forgive a man who has committed some mistake or been guilty of some sin, but we make it very clear that his past makes it impossible for us to trust him again with any responsibility. But Christ had not only forgiven Paul; he entrusted him with work to do. The man who had been Christ's persecutor had been made his ambassador.<p/>(iii) He thanked him because he had appointed him. We must be very careful to note that to which Paul felt himself appointed. He was appointed to service. Paul never thought of himself as appointed to honour, or to leadership within the Church. He was saved to serve. Plutarch tells that when a Spartan won a victory in the games, his reward was that he might stand beside his king in battle. A Spartan wrestler at the Olympic games was offered a very considerable bribe to abandon the struggle; but he refused. Finally, after a terrific effort, he won his victory. Someone said to him: "Well, Spartan, what have you got out of this costly victory you have won?" He answered: "I have won the privilege of standing in front of my king in battle." His reward was to serve and, if need be, to die for his king. It was for service, not honour, that Paul knew himself to be chosen.<p/>(iv) He thanked him because he had empowered him. Paul had long since discovered that Jesus Christ never gives a man a task to do without also giving him the power to do it. Paul would never have said, "See what I have done, but always, "See what Jesus Christ has enabled me to do." No man is good enough, or strong enough, or pure enough, or wise enough to be the servant of Christ. But if he will give himself to Christ, he will go, not in his own strength, but in the strength of his Lord.<p/><b>THE MEANS OF CONVERSION</b> (<a href='B:610 1:12-17'>1Ti 1:12-17</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> There are two further interesting things in this passage.<p/>Paul's Jewish background comes out. He says that Jesus Christ had mercy on him because he committed his sins against Christ and his Church in the days of his ignorance. We often think that the Jewish viewpoint was that sacrifice atoned for sin; a man sinned, his sin broke his relationship with God, then sacrifice was made and God's anger was appeased and the relationship restored.<p/>It may well have been that that was in fact the popular, debased view of sacrifice. But the highest Jewish thought insisted on two things. First, it insisted that sacrifice could never atone for deliberate sin, but only for the sins a man committed in ignorance or when swept away in a moment of passion. Second, the highest Jewish thought insisted that no sacrifice could atone for any sin unless there was contrition in the heart of the man who brought it. Here Paul is speaking out of his Jewish background. His heart had been broken by the mercy of Christ; his sins had been committed in the days before he knew Christ and his love. And for these reasons he felt that there was mercy for him.<p/>There is a still more interesting matter, which is pointed out by E. F. Brown. <a href='B:610 1:14'>1Ti 1:14</a> is difficult. In the Revised Standard Version it runs: "The grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus." The first part is not difficult; it simply means that the grace of God rose higher than Paul's sin. But what exactly is the meaning of the phrase "with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus"? E. F. Brown suggests that it is that the work of the grace of Christ in Paul's heart was helped by the faith and the love he found in the members of the Christian Church, things like the sympathy and the understanding and the kindness he received from men like Ananias, who opened his eyes and called him brother (<a href='B:510 9:10-19'>Act 9:10-19</a>), and Barnabas, who stood by him when the rest of the Church regarded him with bleak suspicion (<a href='B:510 9:26-28'>Act 9:26-28</a>). That is a very lovely idea. And if it be correct, we can see that there are three factors which cooperate in the conversion of any man.<p/>(i) First, there is God. It was the prayer of Jeremiah: "Restore us to thyself, O Lord" (<a href='B:310 5:21'>Lam 5:21</a>). As Augustine had it, we would never even have begun to seek for God unless he had already found us. The prime mover is God; at the back of a man's first desire for goodness there is his seeking love.<p/>(ii) There is a man's own self. The King James Version renders <a href='B:470 18:3'>Mat 18:3</a> entirely passively: "Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." The Revised Standard Version gives a much more active rendering: "Unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." There must be human response to divine appeal. God gave men free will and they can use it either to accept or to refuse his offer.<p/>(iii) There is the agency of some Christian person. It is Paul's conviction that he is sent "to open the eyes of the Gentiles, that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins" (<a href='B:510 26:18'>Act 26:18</a>). It is James' belief that any man who converts the sinner from the error of his way "will save a soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins" (<a href='B:660 5:19-20'>Jas 5:19-20</a>). So then there is a double duty laid upon us. It has been said that a saint is someone who makes it easier to believe in God, and that a saint is someone in whom Christ lives again. We must give thanks for those who showed us Christ, whose words and example brought us to him; and we must strive to be the influence which brings others to him.<p/>In this matter of conversion the initiative of God, the response of man, and the influence of the Christian all combine.<p/><b>THE UNFORGOTTEN SHAME AND THE UNDYING INSPIRATION</b> (<a href='B:610 1:12-17'>1Ti 1:12-17</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The thing which stands out in this passage is Paul's insistence upon remembering his own sin. He heaps up a very climax of words to show what he did to Christ and the Church. He was an insulter of the Church; he had flung hot and angry words at the Christians, accusing them of crimes against God. He was a persecutor; he had taken every means open to him under the Jewish law to annihilate the Christian Church. Then comes a terrible word; he had been a man of insolent and brutal violence. The word in Greek is hubristes (<a href='S:G5197'>G5197</a>). It indicates a kind of arrogant sadism; it describes the man who is out to inflict pain for the sheer joy of inflicting it. The corresponding abstract noun is hubris (<a href='S:G5196'>G5196</a>) which Aristotle defines: "Hubris (<a href='S:G5196'>G5196</a>) means to hurt and to grieve people, in such a way that shame comes to the man who is hurt and grieved, and that not that the person who inflicts the hurt and injury may gain anything else in addition to what he already possesses, but simply that he may find delight in his own cruelty and in the suffering of the other person."<p/>That is what Paul was once like in regard to the Christian Church. Not content with words of insult, he went to the limit of legal persecution. Not content with legal persecution, he went to the limit of sadistic brutality in his attempt to stamp out the Christian faith. He remembered that; and to the end of the day he regarded himself as the chief of sinners. It is not that he was the chief of sinners; he still is. True, he could never forget that he was a forgiven sinner; but neither could he ever forget that he was a sinner. Why should he remember his sin with such vividness?<p/>(i) The memory of his sin was the surest way to keep him from pride. There could be no such thing as spiritual pride for a man who had done the things that he had done. John Newton was one of the great preachers and the supreme hymn-writers of the Church; but he had sunk to the lowest depths to which a man can sink, in the days when he sailed the seas in a slave-trader's ship. So when he became a converted man and a preacher of the gospel, he wrote a text in great letters, and fastened it above the mantlepiece of his study where he could not fail to see it: "Thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt and the Lord thy God redeemed thee." He also composed his own epitaph: "John Newton, Clerk, once an Infidel and Libertine, a Servant of Slaves in Africa, was by the Mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Preserved, Restored, Pardoned, and Appointed to Preach the Faith he had so long laboured to destroy." John Newton never forgot that he was a forgiven sinner; neither did Paul. Neither must we. It does a man good to remember his sins; it saves him from spiritual pride.<p/>(ii) The memory of his sin was the surest way to keep his gratitude aflame. To remember what we have been forgiven is the surest way to keep awake our love to Jesus Christ. F. W. Boreham tells of a letter which the old Puritan, Thomas Goodwin, wrote to his son. "When I was threatening to become cold in my ministry, and when I felt Sabbath morning coming and my heart not filled with amazement at the grace of God, or when I was making ready to dispense the Lord's Supper, do you know what I used to do? I used to take a turn up and down among the sins of my past life, and I always came down again with a broken and a contrite heart, ready to preach, as it was preached in the beginning, the forgiveness of sins." "I do not think, he said, "I ever went up the pulpit stair that I did not stop for a moment at the foot of it and take a turn up and down among the sins of my past years. I do not think that I ever planned a sermon that I did not take a turn round my study table and look back at the sins of my youth and of all my life down to the present; and many a Sabbath morning, when my soul had been cold and dry, for the lack of prayer during the week, a turn up and down in my past life before I went into the pulpit always broke my hard heart and made me close with the gospel for my own soul before I began to preach." When we remember how we have hurt God and hurt those who love us and hurt our fellow-men and when we remember how God and men have forgiven us, that memory must awake the flame of gratitude within our hearts.<p/>(iii) The memory of his sin was the constant urge to greater effort. It is quite true that a man can never earn the approval of God, or deserve his love; but it is also true that he can never stop trying to do something to show how much he appreciates the love and the mercy which have made him what he is. Whenever we love anyone we cannot help trying always to demonstrate our love. When we remember how much God loves us and how little we deserve it, when we remember that it was for us that Jesus Christ hung and suffered on Calvary, it must compel us to effort that will tell God we realize what he has done for us and will show Jesus Christ that his sacrifice was not in vain..<p/>(iv) The memory of his sin was bound to be a constant encouragement to others. Paul uses a vivid picture. He says that what happened to him was a kind of outline-sketch of what was going to happen to those who would accept Christ in the days to come. The word he uses is hupotuposis (<a href='S:G5296'>G5296</a>) which means an outline, a sketch-plan, a first draft, a preliminary model. It is as if Paul were saying, "Look what Christ has done for me! If someone like me can be saved, there is hope for everyone." Suppose a man was seriously ill and had to go through a dangerous operation, it would be the greatest encouragement to him if he met and talked with someone who had undergone the same operation and had emerged completely cured. Paul did not shrinkingly conceal his record; he blazoned it abroad, that others might take courage and be filled with hope that the grace which had changed him could change them too.<p/>Greatheart said to Christian's boys: "You must know that Forgetful Green is the most dangerous place in all these parts." Paul's sin was something which he refused to forget, for every time he remembered the greatness of his sin, he remembered the still greater greatness of Jesus Christ. It was not that he brooded unhealthily over his sin; it was that he remembered it to rejoice in the wonder of the grace of Jesus Christ.<p/><b>THE SUMMONS WHICH CANNOT BE DENIED</b> (<a href='B:610 1:18-20'>1Ti 1:18-20</a>)


text:
 I entrust this charge to you, Timothy lad, because it is the natural consequence of the messages which came to the prophets from God, and which marked you out as the very man for this work, so that, in obedience to these messages, you may wage a fine campaign, maintaining your faith and a good conscience all the time; and there are some who, in matters of the faith, have repelled the guidance of conscience, and have come to shipwreck. Amongst them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, that they may be disciplined out of their insults to God and his Church.<p/></i><p/>The first section of this passage is highly compressed. What lies behind it is this. There must have been a meeting of the prophets of the Church. They were men known to be within the confidence and the counsels of God. "Surely the Lord does nothing without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets" (<a href='B:370 3:7'>Amo 3:7</a>). This meeting thought about the situation which was threatening the Church and came to the conclusion that Timothy was the man to deal with it. We can see the prophets acting in exactly the same way in <a href='B:510 13:1-3'>Act 13:1-3</a>. The Church was faced with the great decision whether or not to take the gospel out to the Gentiles; and it was to the prophets that there came the message of the Holy Spirit, saying: "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them" (<a href='B:510 13:2'>Act 13:2</a>). That was what had happened to Timothy. He had been marked out by the prophets as the man to deal with the situation in the Church. It may well have been that he shrank from the greatness of the task which faced him, and here Paul encourages him with certain considerations.<p/>(i) Paul says to him: "You are a man who has been chosen and you cannot refuse your task." Something like that happened to John Knox. He had been teaching in St. Andrews. His teaching was supposed to be private but many came to it, for he was obviously a man with a message. So the people urged him "that he would take the preaching place upon him. But he utterly refused, alleging that he would not run where God had not called him.... Whereupon they Privily among themselves advising, having with them in council Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, they concluded that they would give a charge to the said John, and that publicly by the mouth of their preacher."<p/>So Sunday came and Knox was in Church and John Rough was preaching. "The said John Rough, preacher, directed his words to the said John Knox, saying: 'Brother, ye shall not be offended, albeit that I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all those that are here present, which is this: In the name of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of these that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that you refuse not this holy vocation, but...that you take upon you the public office and charge of preaching, even as you look to avoid God's heavy displeasure, and desire that he shall multiply his graces with you.' And in the end he said to those that were present: 'Was not this your charge to me? And do ye not approve this vocation?' They answered: 'It was: and we approve it.' Whereat the said John, abashed, burst forth in most abundant tears, and withdrew himself to his chamber. His countenance and behaviour, from that day till the day that he was compelled to present himself to the public place of preaching, did sufficiently declare the grief and trouble of his heart; for no man saw any sign of mirth in him, neither yet had he pleasure to accompany any man, many days together."<p/>John Knox was chosen; he did not want to answer the call; but he had to, for the choice had been made by God. Years afterwards the Regent Morton uttered his famous epitaph by Knox's graveside: "In respect that he bore God's message, to whom he must make account for the same, he (albeit he was weak and an unworthy creature, and a fearful man) feared not the faces of men." The consciousness of being chosen gave him courage.<p/>So Paul says to Timothy: "You have been chosen; you cannot let down God and man." To every one of us there comes God's choosing; and when we are summoned to some work for him, we dare not refuse it.<p/>(ii) It may be that Paul was saying to Timothy: "Be true to your name." Timothy--its full form is Timotheos (<a href='S:G5095'>G5095</a>) --is composed of two Greek words, time (<a href='S:G5092'>G5092</a>) which means "honour, and theos (<a href='S:G2316'>G2316</a>) which means "God, and so means "honour to God." If we are called by the name Christian, one of Christ's folk, to that name we must be true.<p/>(iii) Finally, Paul says to Timothy: "I entrust this charge to you". The word which he uses for to entrust is paratithesthai (<a href='S:G3908'>G3908</a>), which is the word used of entrusting something valuable to someone's safe keeping. It is used, for instance, of making a deposit in a bank, or of entrusting someone to another's care. It always implies that a trust has been reposed in someone for which he will be called to account. So Paul says: "Timothy, into your hands I am placing a sacred trust. See that you do not fail." God reposes his trust in us; into our hands he puts his honour and his Church. We too must see to it that we do not fail.<p/><b>DESPATCHED ON GOD'S CAMPAIGN</b> (<a href='B:610 1:18-20'>1Ti 1:18-20</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> What then is entrusted to Timothy? He is despatched to fight a good campaign. The picture of life as a campaign is one which has always fascinated men's thoughts. Maximus of Tyre said: "God is the general; life is the campaign; man is the soldier." Seneca said: "For me to live, my dear Lucilius, is to be a soldier." When a man became a follower of the goddess Isis and was initiated into the Mysteries connected with the goddess' name, the summons to him was: "Enrol yourself in the sacred soldiery of Isis."<p/>There are three things to be noted.<p/>(i) It is not to a battle that we are summoned; it is to a campaign. Life is one long campaign, a service from which there is no release, not a short, sharp struggle after which a man can lay aside his arms and rest in peace. To change the metaphor, life is not a sprint; it is a marathon race. It is there that the danger enters in. It is necessary to be for ever on the watch. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." The temptations of life never cease their search for a chink in the armour of the Christian. It is one of the commonest dangers in life to proceed in a series of spasms. We must remember that we are summoned to a campaign which goes on as long as life does.<p/>(ii) It is to a fine campaign that Timothy is summoned. Here again we have the word kalos (<a href='S:G2570'>G2570</a>) of which the Pastorals are so fond. It does not mean only something which is good and strong; it means something which is also winsome and lovely. The soldier of Christ is not a conscript who serves grimly and grudgingly; he is a volunteer who serves with a certain knightly chivalry. He is not the slave of duty, but the servant of joy.<p/>(iii) Timothy is commanded to take with him two weapons of equipment. (a) He is to take faith. Even when things are at their darkest, he must have faith in the essential rightness of his cause and in the ultimate triumph of God. It was faith which kept up John Knox when he was in despair. Once when he was a slave on the galleys, the ship came in sight of St. Andrews. He was so weak that he had to be lifted up bodily in order to see. They showed him the church steeple and asked if he knew it. "Yes, he said, "I know it well: and I am fully persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that I shall not depart this life till that my tongue shall glorify his godly name in the same place." He describes his feelings in 1554 when he had to flee the country to escape the vengeance of Mary Tudor. "Not only the ungodly, but even my faithful brethren, yea, and my own self, that is, all natural understanding, judged my cause to be irremediable. The frail flesh, oppressed with fear and pain, desireth deliverance, ever abhorring and drawing back from obedience giving. O Christian brethren, I write by experience.... I know the grudging and murmuring complaints of the flesh; I know the anger, wrath, and indignation which it conceiveth against God, calling all his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour utterly to fall from God. Against which remains only faith." The Christian soldier needs in the darkest hour the faith that will not shrink. (b) He is to take the defence of a good conscience. That is to say, the Christian soldier must at least try to live in accordance with his own doctrine. The virtue is gone out of a man's message when his conscience condemns him as he speaks.<p/><b>A STERN REBUKE</b> (<a href='B:610 1:18-20'>1Ti 1:18-20</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The passage closes with a stern rebuke to two members of the Church who have injured the Church, grieved Paul, and made shipwreck of their own lives. Hymenaeus is mentioned again in <a href='B:620 2:17'>2Ti 2:17</a>; and Alexander may well be the Alexander who is referred to in <a href='B:620 4:14'>2Ti 4:14</a>. Paul has three complaints against them.<p/>(i) They had rejected the guidance of conscience. They had allowed their own desires to speak with more persuasiveness than the voice of God.<p/>(ii) They had relapsed into evil practices. Once they had abandoned God, life had become soiled and debased. When God went from life, beauty went along with him.<p/>(iii) They had taken to false teaching. Again it was almost inevitable. When a man takes the wrong way, his first instinct is to find excuses for himself. He takes the Christian teaching and twists it to suit himself. Out of the right he finds perverted arguments to justify the wrong. He finds arguments in the words of Christ to justify the ways of the devil. The moment a man disobeys the voice of conscience, his conduct becomes debased and his thinking twisted.<p/>So Paul goes on to say that he has "handed them over to Satan." What is the meaning of this terrible phrase? There are three possibilities.<p/>(i) He may be thinking of the Jewish practice of excommunication. According to synagogue practice, if a man was an evil-doer he was first publicly rebuked. If that was ineffective, he was banished from the synagogue for a period of thirty days. If he was still stubbornly unrepentant, he was put under the ban, which made him a person accursed, debarred from the society of men and the fellowship of God. In such a case a man might well be said to be handed over to Satan.<p/>(ii) He may be saying that he has barred them from the Church and turned them loose in the world. In a heathen society it was inevitable that men should draw a hard and fast line between the Church and the world. The Church was God's territory; the world was Satan's; and to be debarred from the Church was to be handed over to that territory which was under the sway of Satan. The phrase may mean that these two troublers of the Church were abandoned to the world.<p/>(iii) The third explanation is the most likely of the three. Satan was held to be responsible for human suffering and pain. A man in the Corinthian Church had been guilty of the terrible sin of incest. Paul's advice was that he should be delivered to Satan "for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus" (<a href='B:530 5:5'>1Co 5:5</a>). The idea is that the Church should pray for some physical chastisement to fall on that man so that, by the pain of his body, he might be brought to the senses of his mind. In Job's case it was Satan who brought the physical suffering upon him (<a href='B:220 2:6-7'>Job 2:6-7</a>). In the New Testament itself we have the terrible end of Ananias and Sapphira (<a href='B:510 5:5'>Act 5:5</a>; <a href='B:510 5:10'>Act 5:10</a>), and the blindness which fell upon Elymas because of his opposition to the gospel (<a href='B:510 13:11'>Act 13:11</a>). It may well be that it was Paul's prayer that these two men should be subjected to some painful visitation which would be a punishment and a warning.<p/>That is all the more likely because it is Paul's hope that they will be, not obliterated and destroyed, but disciplined out of their evil ways. To him, as it ought to be to us, punishment was never mere vindictive vengeance but always remedial discipline, never meant simply to hurt but always to cure. 


text:
 So then the first thing I urge you to do is to offer your requests, your prayers, your petitions, your thanksgivings for all men. Pray for kings and for all who are in authority, that they may enjoy a life that is tranquil and undisturbed, and that they may act in all godliness and reverence. That is the fine way to live, the way which meets with the approval of God, our Saviour, who wishes all men to be saved, and to come to a full knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one Mediator, between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, who gave himself a ransom for all. It was thus he bore his witness to God in his own good times, a witness to which I have been appointed a herald and an envoy (I am speaking the truth: I do not lie), a teacher to the Gentiles, a teacher whose message is based on faith and truth.<p/></i><p/>Before we study this passage in detail we must note one thing which shines out from it in a way that no one can fail to see. Few passages in the New Testament so stress the universality of the gospel. Prayer is to be made for all men; God is the Saviour who wishes all men to be saved; Jesus gave his life a ransom for all. As Walter Lock writes: "God's will to save is as wide as his will to create."<p/>This is a note which sounds in the New Testament again and again. Through Christ God was reconciling the world to himself (<a href='B:540 5:18-19'>2Co 5:18-19</a>). God so loved the world that he gave his Son (<a href='B:500 3:16'>Joh 3:16</a>). It was Jesus' confidence that, if he was lifted up on his Cross, soon or late he would draw all men to him (<a href='B:500 12:32'>Joh 12:32</a>).<p/>E. F. Brown calls this passage "the charter of missionary work." He says that it is the proof that all men are capax dei, capable of receiving God. They may be lost, but they can be found; they may be ignorant, but they can be enlightened; they may be sinners, but they can be saved. George Wishart, the forerunner of John Knox, writes in his translation of the First Swiss Confession: "The end and intent of the Scripture is to declare that God is benevolent and friendly-minded to mankind; and that he hath declared that kindness in and through Jesus Christ, his only Son; the which kindness is received by faith." That is why prayer must be made for all. God wants all men, and so, therefore, must his Church.<p/>(i) The gospel includes high and low. Both the Emperor in his power and the slave in his helplessness were included in the sweep of the gospel. Both the philosopher in his wisdom and the simple man in his ignorance need the grace and truth that the gospel can bring. Within the gospel there are no class distinctions. King and commoner, rich and poor, aristocrat and peasant, master and man are all included in its limitless embrace.<p/>(ii) The gospel includes good and bad. A strange malady has sometimes afflicted the Church in modern times, causing it to insist that a man be respectable before he is allowed in, and to took askance at sinners who seek entry to its doors. But the New Testament is clear that the Church exists, not only to edify the good, but to welcome and save the sinner. C. T. Studd used to repeat four lines of doggerel:<p/>"Some want to live within the sound<p/>Of Church or Chapel bell;<p/>I want to run a rescue shop<p/>Within a yard of hell."<p/>One of the great saints of modern times, and indeed of all time, was Toyohiko Kagawa. It was to Shinkawa that he went to find men and women for Christ and he lived there in the filthiest and most depraved slums in the world. W. J. Smart describes the situation: "His neighbours were unregistered prostitutes, thieves who boasted of their power to outwit all the police in the city, and murderers who were not only proud of their murder record but always ready to add to their local prestige by committing another. All the people, whether sick, or feeble-minded or criminal, lived in conditions of abysmal misery, in streets slippery with filth, where rats crawled out of open sewers to die. The air was always filled with stench. An idiot girl who lived next door to Kagawa had vile pictures painted on her back to decoy lustful men to her den. Everywhere human bodies rotted with syphilis." Kagawa wanted people like that, and so does Jesus Christ, for he wants all men, good and bad alike.<p/>(iii) The gospel embraces Christian and non-Christian. Prayer is to be made for all men. The Emperors and rulers for whom this letter bids us pray were not Christians; they were in fact hostile to the Church; and yet they were to be borne to the throne of grace by the prayers of the Church. For the true Christian there is no such thing as an enemy in all this world. None is outside his prayers, for none is outside the love of Christ, and none is outside the purpose of God, who wishes all men to be saved.<p/><b>THE WAY OF PRAYER</b> (<a href='B:610 2:1-7'>1Ti 2:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Four different words for prayer are grouped together. It is true that they are not to be sharply distinguished; nevertheless each has something to tell us of the way of prayer.<p/>(i) The first is deesis (<a href='S:G1162'>G1162</a>), which we have translated request. It is not exclusively a religious word; it can be used of a request made either to a fellow-man or to God. But its fundamental idea is a sense of need. No one will make a request unless a sense of need has already wakened a desire. Prayer begins with a sense of need. It begins with the conviction that we cannot deal with life ourselves. That sense of human weakness is the basis of all approach to God.<p/>"Let not conscience make you linger,<p/>Nor of fitness fondly dream;<p/>All the fitness he requireth<p/>Is to feel your need of him."<p/>(ii) The second is proseuche (<a href='S:G4335'>G4335</a>), which we have translated prayer. The basic difference between deesis (<a href='S:G1162'>G1162</a>) and proseuche (<a href='S:G4335'>G4335</a>) is that deesis (<a href='S:G1162'>G1162</a>) may be addressed either to man or God, but proseuche (<a href='S:G4335'>G4335</a>) is never used of anything else but approach to God. There are certain needs which only God can satisfy. There is a strength which he alone can give; a forgiveness which he alone can grant; a certainty which he alone can bestow. It may well be that our weakness haunts us because we so often take our needs to the wrong place.<p/>(iii) The third is enteuxis (<a href='S:G1783'>G1783</a>), which we have translated petition. Of the three words this is the most interesting. It has a most interesting history. It is the noun from the verb entugchanein (<a href='S:G1793'>G1793</a>). This originally meant simply to meet, or to fall in with a person; it went on to mean to hold intimate conversation with a person; then it acquired a special meaning and meant to enter into a king's presence and to submit a petition to him. That tells us much about prayer. It tells us that the way to God stands open and that we have the right to bring our petitions to one who is a king.<p/>"Thou art coming to a King;<p/>Large petitions with thee bring;<p/>For his grace and power are such,<p/>None can ever ask too much."<p/>It is impossible to ask too great a boon from this King.<p/>(iv) The fourth is eucharistia (<a href='S:G2169'>G2169</a>), which we have translated thanksgiving. Prayer does not mean only asking God for things; it also means thanking God for things. For too many of us prayer is an exercise in complaint, when it should be an exercise in thanksgiving. Epictetus, not a Christian but a Stoic philosopher, used to say: "What can I, who am a little old lame man, do, except give praise to God?" We have the right to bring our needs to God; but we have also the duty of bringing our thanksgivings to him.<p/><b>PRAYER FOR THOSE IN AUTHORITY</b> (<a href='B:610 2:1-7'>1Ti 2:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> This passage distinctly commands prayer for kings and emperors and all who are set in authority. This was a cardinal principle of communal Christian prayer. Emperors might be persecutors and those in authority might be determined to stamp out Christianity. But the Christian Church never, even in the times of bitterest persecution, ceased to pray for them.<p/>It is extraordinary to trace how all through its early days, those days of bitter persecution, the Church regarded it as an absolute duty to pray for the Emperor and his subordinate kings and governors. "Fear God," said Peter. "Honour the Emperor" (<a href='B:670 2:17'>1Pe 2:17</a>), and we must remember that that Emperor was none other than Nero, that monster of cruelty. Tertullian insists that for the Emperor the Christian pray for "long life, secure dominion, a safe home, a faithful senate, a righteous people, and a world at peace" (Apology 30). "We pray for our rulers, he wrote, "for the state of the world, for the peace of all things and for the postponement of the end" (Apology 39). He writes: "The Christian is the enemy of no man, least of all of the Emperor, for we know that, since he has been appointed by God, it is necessary that we should love him, and reverence him, and honour him, and desire his safety, together with that of the whole Roman Empire. Therefore we sacrifice for the safety of the Emperor" (Ad Scapulam 2). Cyprian, writing to Demetrianus, speaks of the Christian Church as "sacrificing and placating God night and day for your peace and safety" (Ad Demetrianum 20). In A.D. 311 the Emperor Galerius actually asked for the prayers of the Christians, and promised them mercy and indulgence if they prayed for the state. Tatian writes: "Does the Emperor order us to pay tribute? We willingly offer it. Does the ruler order us to render service or servitude? We acknowledge our servitude. But a man must be honoured as befits a man but only God is to be reverenced" (Apology 4). Theophilus of Antioch writes: "The honour that I will give the Emperor is all the greater, because I will not worship him, but I will pray for him. I will worship no one but the true and real God, for I know that the Emperor was appointed by him.... Those give real honour to the Emperor who are well-disposed to him, who obey him, and who pray for him" (Apology 1: 11). Justin Martyr writes: "We worship God alone, but in all other things we gladly serve you, acknowledging kings and rulers of men, and praying that they may be found to have pure reason with kingly power" (Apology 1: 14,17).<p/>The greatest of all the prayers for the Emperor is in Clement of Rome's First Letter to the Church at Corinth which was written about A.D. 90 when the savagery of Domitian was still fresh in men's minds: "Thou, Lord and Master, hast given our rulers and governors the power of sovereignty through thine excellent and unspeakable might, that we, knowing the glory and honour which thou hast given them, may submit ourselves unto them, in nothing resisting thy will. Grant unto them, therefore, O Lord, health, peace, concord, stability, that they may administer the government which thou hast given them without failure. For thou, O heavenly Master, King of the Ages, givest to the sons of men glory and honour and power over all things that are upon the earth. Do thou, Lord, direct their counsel according to that which is good and well-pleasing in thy sight, that, administering the power which thou hast given them in peace and gentleness with godliness, they may obtain thy favour. O thou, who alone art able to do these things, and things far more exceeding good than these for us, we praise thee through the High Priest and Guardian of our souls, Jesus Christ, through whom be the glory and the majesty unto thee both now and for all generations, and for ever and ever. Amen" (1 Clement 61).<p/>The Church always regarded it as a bounden duty to pray for those set in authority over the kingdoms of the earth; and brought even its persecutors before the throne of grace.<p/><b>THE GIFTS OF GOD</b> (<a href='B:610 2:1-7'>1Ti 2:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The Church prayed for certain things for those in authority.<p/>(i) It prayed for "a life that is tranquil and undisturbed." That was the prayer for freedom from war, from rebellion and from anything which would disturb the peace of the realm. That is the good citizen's prayer for his country.<p/>(ii) But the Church prayed for much more than that. It prayed for "a life that is lived in godliness and reverence." Here we are confronted with two great words which are keynotes of the Pastoral Epistles and describe qualities which not only the ruler but every Christian must covet.<p/>First, there is godliness, eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>). This is one of the great and almost untranslatable Greek words. It describes reverence both towards God and man. It describes that attitude of mind which respects man and honours God. Eusebius defined it as "reverence towards the one and only God, and the kind of life that he would wish us to lead." To the Greek, the great example of eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) was Socrates whom Xenophon describes in the following terms: "So pious and devoutly religious that he would take no step apart from the will of heaven; so just and upright that he never did even a trifling injury to any living soul; so self-controlled, so temperate, that he never at any time chose the sweeter in place of the bitter; so sensible and wise and prudent that in distinguishing the better from the worse he never erred" (Xenophon: Memorabilia, 4, 8, 11). Eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) comes very near to that great Latin word pietas, which Warde Fowler describes thus: "The quality known to the Romans as pietas rises, in spite of trial and danger, superior to the enticements of individual passion and selfish ease. Aeneas' pietas became a sense of duty to the will of the gods, as well as to his father, his son and his people; and this duty never leaves him." Clearly eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) is a tremendous thing. It never forgets the reverence due to God; it never forgets the rights due to men; it never forgets the respect due to self. It describes the character of the man who never fails God, man or himself.<p/>Second, there is reverence, semnotes (<a href='S:G4587'>G4587</a>). Here again we are in the realm of the untranslatable. The corresponding adjective semnos (<a href='S:G4586'>G4586</a>) is constantly applied to the gods. R. C. Trench says that the man who is semnos (<a href='S:G4586'>G4586</a>) "has on him a grace and a dignity, not lent by earth." He says that he is one who "without demanding it challenges and inspires reverence." Aristotle was the great ethical teacher of the Greeks. He had a way of describing every virtue as the mean between two extremes. On the one side there was an extreme of excess and on the other an extreme of defect, and in between there was the mean, the happy medium, in which virtue lay. Aristotle says that semnotes (<a href='S:G4587'>G4587</a>) is the mean between areskeia (<a href='S:G699'>G699</a>), subservience, and authadeia (<a href='S:G829'>G829</a>), arrogance. It may be said that for the man who is semnos (<a href='S:G4586'>G4586</a>) all life is one act of worship; all life is lived in the presence of God; he moves through the world, as it has been put, as if it was the temple of the living God. He never forgets the holiness of God or the dignity of man.<p/>These two great qualities are regal qualities which every man must covet and for which every man must pray.<p/><b>ONE GOD AND ONE SAVIOUR</b> (<a href='B:610 2:1-7'>1Ti 2:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Paul concludes with a statement of the greatest truths of the Christian faith.<p/>(i) There is one God. We are not living in a world such as the Gnostics produced with their theories of two gods, hostile to each other. We are not living in a world such as the heathen produced with their horde of gods, often in competition with one another. Missionaries tell us that one of the greatest reliefs which Christianity brings to the heathen is the conviction that there is only one God. They live for ever terrified of the gods and it is an emancipation to discover that there is one God only whose name is Father and whose nature is Love.<p/>(ii) There is one Mediator. Even the Jews would have said that there are many mediators between God and man. A mediator is one who stands between two parties and acts as go-between. To the Jews the angels were mediators. The Testament of Dan (<a href='B:340 6:2'>Dan 6:2</a>) has it: "Draw near unto God, and unto the angel who intercedes for you, for he is a mediator between God and man." To the Greeks there were all kinds of mediators. Plutarch said it was an insult to God to conceive that he was in any way directly involved in the world; he was involved in the world only through angels and demons and demigods who were, so to speak, his liaison officers.<p/>Neither in Jewish nor in Greek thought had a man direct access to God. But, through Jesus Christ, the Christian has direct that access, with nothing to bar the way between. Further, there is only one Mediator. E. F. Brown tells us that that is, for instance, what the Hindus find so hard to believe. They say: "Your religion is good for you, and ours for us." But unless there is one God and one Mediator there can be no such thing as the brotherhood of man. If there are many gods and many mediators competing for their allegiance and their love, religion becomes something which divides men instead of uniting them. It is because there is one God and one Mediator that men are brethren one of another.<p/>Paul goes on to call Jesus the one who gave his life a ransom for all. That simply means that it cost God the life and death of his Son to bring men back to himself. There was a man who lost a son in the war. He had lived a most careless and even a godless life; but his son's death brought him face to face with God as never before. He became a changed man. One day he was standing before the local war memorial, looking at his son's name upon it. And very gently he said: "I guess he had to go down to lift me up." That is what Jesus did; it cost his life and death to tell men of the love of God and to bring men home to him.<p/>Then Paul claims to himself four offices.<p/>(i) He is a herald of the story of Jesus Christ. A herald is a man who makes a statement and who says: "This is true." He is a man who brings a proclamation that is not his own, but which comes from the king.<p/>(ii) He is a witness to the story of Christ. A witness is a man who says: "This is true, and I know it" and says also "It works." He is a man who tells, not only the story of Christ, but also the story of what Christ has done for him.<p/>(iii) He is an envoy. An envoy is one whose duty is to commend his country in a foreign land. An envoy in the Christian sense is therefore one who commends the story of Christ to others. He wishes to communicate that story to others, so that it will mean as much to them as it does to him.<p/>(iv) He is a teacher. The herald is the person who proclaims the facts; the witness is the person who proclaims the power of the facts; the envoy is the person who commends the facts; the teacher is the person who leads men into the meaning of the facts. It is not enough to know that Christ lived and died; we must think out what that meant. A man must not only feel the wonder of the story of Christ; he must think out its meaning for himself and for the world.<p/><b>BARRIERS TO PRAYER</b> (<a href='B:610 2:8-15'>1Ti 2:8-15</a>)


text:
 So, then, it is my wish that men should pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, with no anger in their hearts and no doubts in their minds. Even so it is my wish that women should modestly and wisely adorn themselves in seemly dress. This adornment should not consist in braided hair, and ornaments of gold, and pearls, but--as befits women who profess to reverence God--they should adorn themselves with good works. Let a woman learn in silence and with all submission. I do not allow a woman to teach or to dictate to a man. Rather, it is my advice that she should be silent. For Adam was formed first, and then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and so became guilty of transgression. But women will be saved through child-bearing, if they continue in faith and love, and if they wisely walk the road that leads to holiness.<p/></i><p/>The early Church took over the Jewish attitude of prayer, which was to pray standing, with hands outstretched and the palms upwards. Later Tertullian was to say that this depicted the attitude of Jesus upon the Cross.<p/>The Jews had always known about the barriers which kept a man's prayers from God. Isaiah heard God say to the people: "When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood" (<a href='B:290 1:15'>Isa 1:15</a>). Here, too, certain things are demanded.<p/>(i) He who prays must stretch forth holy hands. He must hold up to God hands which do not touch the forbidden things. This does not mean for one moment that the sinner is debarred from God; but it does mean that there is no reality in the prayers of the man who then goes out to soil his hands with forbidden things, as if he had never prayed. It is not thinking of the man who is helplessly in the grip of some passion and desperately fighting against it, bitterly conscious of his failure. It is thinking of the man whose prayers are a sheer formality.<p/>(ii) He who prays must have no anger in his heart. It has been said that "forgiveness is indivisible." Human and divine forgiveness go hand in hand. Again and again Jesus stresses the fact that we cannot hope to receive the forgiveness of God so long as we are at enmity with our fellow-men. "So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (<a href='B:470 5:23-24'>Mat 5:23-24</a>). "If you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (<a href='B:470 6:15'>Mat 6:15</a>). Jesus tells how the unforgiving servant himself found no forgiveness, and ends: "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart" (<a href='B:470 18:35'>Mat 18:35</a>). To be forgiven, we must be forgiving. The Didache (compare <a href='S:G1322'>G1322</a>), the earliest Christian book on public worship, which dates from about A.D. 100, has it: "Let no one who has a quarrel with his neighbour come to us, until they are reconciled." The bitterness in a man's heart is a barrier which hinders his prayers from reaching God.<p/>(iii) He who prays must have no doubts in his mind. This phrase can mean two things. The word used is dialogismos (<a href='S:G1261'>G1261</a>), which can mean both an argument and a doubt. If we take it in the sense of argument, it simply repeats what has gone before and restates the fact that bitterness and quarrels and venomous debates are a hindrance to prayer. It is better to take it in the sense of doubt. Before prayer is answered there must be belief that God will answer. If a man prays pessimistically and with no real belief that it is any use, his prayer falls wingless to the ground. Before a man can be cured, he must believe that he can be cured; before a man can lay hold on the grace of God, he must believe in that grace. We must take our prayers to God in the complete confidence that he hears and answers prayer.<p/><b>WOMEN IN THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:610 2:8-15'>1Ti 2:8-15</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The second part of this passage deals with the place of women in the Church. It cannot be read out of its historical context, for it springs entirely from the situation in which it was written.<p/>(i) It was written against a Jewish background. No nation ever gave a bigger place to women in home and in family things than the Jews did; but officially the position of a woman was very low. In Jewish law she was not a person but a thing; she was entirely at the disposal of her father or of her husband. She was forbidden to learn the law; to instruct a woman in the law was to cast pearls before swine. Women had no part in the synagogue service; they were shut apart in a section of the synagogue, or in a gallery, where they could not be seen. A man came to the synagogue to learn; but, at the most, a woman came to hear. In the synagogue the lesson from Scripture was read by members of the congregation; but not by women, for that would have been to lessen "the honour of the congregation." It was absolutely forbidden for a woman to teach in a school; she might not even teach the youngest children. A woman was exempt from the stated demands of the Law. It was not obligatory on her to attend the sacred feasts and festivals. Women, slaves and children were classed together. In the Jewish morning prayer a man thanked God that God had not made him "a Gentile, a slave or a woman." In the Sayings of the Fathers Rabbi Jose ben Johanan is quoted as saying: "'Let thy house be opened wide, and let the poor be thy household, and talk not much with a woman.' Hence the wise have said: 'Everyone that talketh much with a woman causes evil to himself, and desists from the works of the Law, and his end is that he inherits Gehenna.'" A strict Rabbi would never greet a woman on the street, not even his own wife or daughter or mother or sister. It was said of woman: "Her work is to send her children to the synagogue; to attend to domestic concerns; to leave her husband free to study in the schools; to keep house for him until he returns."<p/>(ii) It was written against a Greek background. The Greek background made things doubly difficult. The place of women in Greek religion was low. The Temple of Aphrodite in Corinth had a thousand priestesses who were sacred prostitutes and every evening plied their trade on the city streets. The Temple of Diana in Ephesus had its hundreds of priestesses called the Melissae, which means the bees, whose function was the same. The respectable Greek woman led a very confined life. She lived in her own quarters into which no one but her husband came. She did not even appear at meals. She never at any time appeared on the street alone; she never went to any public assembly. The fact is that if in a Greek town Christian women had taken an active and a speaking part in its work, the Church would inevitably have gained the reputation of being the resort of loose women.<p/>Further, in Greek society there were women whose whole life consisted in elaborate dressing and braiding of the hair. In Rome, Pliny tells us of a bride, Lollia Paulina, whose bridal dress cost the equivalent of 432,000 British pounds. Even the Greeks and the Romans were shocked at the love of dress and of adornment which characterized some of their women. The great Greek religions were called the Mystery religions, and they had precisely the same regulations about dress as Paul has here. There is an inscription which reads: "A consecrated woman shall not have gold ornaments, nor rouge, nor face-whitening, nor a head-band, nor braided hair, nor shoes, except those made of felt or of the skins of sacrificed animals. "The early Church did not lay down these regulations as in any sense permanent, but as things which were necessary in the situation in which it found itself.<p/>In any event there is much on the other side. In the old story it was the woman who was created second and who fell to the seduction of the serpent tempter; but it was Mary of Nazareth who bore and who trained the child Jesus; it was Mary of Magdala who was first to see the risen Lord; it was four women who of all the disciples stood by the Cross. Priscilla with her husband Aquila was a valued teacher in the early Church, who led Apollos to a knowledge of the truth (<a href='B:510 18:26'>Act 18:26</a>). Euodia and Syntyche, in spite of their quarrel, were women who laboured in the gospel (Php_4:2-3). Philip, the evangelist, had four daughters who were prophetesses (<a href='B:510 21:9'>Act 21:9</a>). The aged women were to teach (<a href='B:630 2:3'>Tit 2:3</a>). Paul held Lois and Eunice in the highest honour (<a href='B:620 1:5'>2Ti 1:5</a>), and there is many a woman's name held in honour in <a href='B:520 16:1-27'>Rom 16:1-27</a>.<p/>All the things in this chapter are mere temporary regulations to meet a given situation. If we want Paul's permanent view on this matter, we get it in <a href='B:550 3:28'>Gal 3:28</a>: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus." In Christ the differences of place and honour and function within the Church are all wiped out.<p/>And yet this passage ends with a real truth. Women, it says, will be saved in child-bearing. There are two possible meanings here. It is just possible that this is a reference to the fact that Mary, a woman, was the mother of Jesus and that it means that women will be saved--as all others will--by that supreme act of child-bearing. But it is much more likely that the meaning is much simpler; and that it means that women will find salvation, not in addressing meetings, but in motherhood, which is their crown. Whatever else is true, a woman is queen within her home.<p/>We must not read this passage as a barrier to all women's service within the Church, but in the light of its Jewish and its Greek background. And we must look for Paul's permanent views in the passage where he tells us that the differences are wiped out, and that men and women, slaves and freemen, Jews and Gentiles, are all eligible to serve Christ. 


text:
 There is a saying which everyone must believe--if a man aspires to the office of overseer in the Church, it is a fine work on which his heart is set. An overseer must be a man against whom no criticism can be made; he must have been married only once; he must be sober, prudent, well-behaved, hospitable and possessed of an aptitude for teaching. He must not over-indulge in wine, nor must he be the kind of man who assaults others, but he must be gentle and peaceable, and free from the love of money. He must manage his own house well, keeping his children under control with complete dignity. (If a man does not know how to manage his own house, how can he take charge of the congregation of God?) He must not be a recent convert, in case he becomes inflated with a sense of his own importance, and so fall into the same condemnation as the devil did. He must have earned the respect of those outside the Church, that he may not fall into reproach and into the snare of the devil.<p/></i><p/>This is a very important passage from the point of view of Church government. It deals with the man whom the King James and Revised Standard Versions call the bishop, and whom we have translated overseer.<p/>In the New Testament there are two words which describe the principal office-bearers of the Church, the office-bearers who were to be found in every congregation, and on whose conduct and administration its welfare depended.<p/>(i) There was the man who was called the elder (presbuteros, <a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>). The eldership is the most ancient of all offices within the Church. The Jews had their elders, and they traced their origin to the occasion when Moses, in the desert wanderings, appointed seventy men to help him in the task of controlling and caring for the people (<a href='B:40 11:16'>Num 11:16</a>). Every synagogue had its elders, and they were the real leaders of the Jewish community. They presided over the worship of the synagogue; they administered rebuke and discipline where these were necessary; they settled the disputes which other nations would have taken to the law-courts. Amongst the Jews the elders were the respected men who exercised a fatherly oversight over the spiritual and material affairs of every Jewish community. But more nations than the Jews had an eldership. The presiding body of the Spartans was called the gerousia (<a href='S:G1087'>G1087</a>), which means the board of the elder men. The Parliament of Rome was called the senate, which comes from senex, which means an old man. In England the men who looked after the affairs of the community were called the aldermen, which means the elder men. In New Testament times every Egyptian village had its village elders who looked after the affairs of the community. The elders had a long history, and they had a place in the life of almost every community.<p/>(ii) But sometimes the New Testament uses another word, episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>), which the King James and Revised Standard Versions translate bishop, and which literally means overseer, or superintendent. This word, too, has a long and honourable history. The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures, uses it to describe those who were the taskmasters, who were over the public works and public building schemes (<a href='B:140 34:17'>2Ch 34:17</a>). The Greeks use it to describe the men appointed to go out from the mother city to regulate the affairs of a newly founded colony in some distant place. They use it to describe what we might call commissioners appointed to regulate the affairs of a city. The Romans use it to describe the magistrates appointed to oversee the sale of food within the city of Rome. It is used of the special delegates appointed by a king to see that the laws he had laid down were carried out. Episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) always implies two things; first, oversight over some area or sphere of work and second, responsibility to some higher power and authority.<p/>The great question is: What was the relationship in the early Church between the elder, the presbuteros (<a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>), and the overseer, the episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) ?<p/>Modern scholarship is practically unanimous in holding that in the early Church the presbuteros (<a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>) and the episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) were one and the same. The grounds for that identification are: (a) Elders were everywhere appointed. After the first missionary journey, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in all the Churches they had founded (<a href='B:510 14:23'>Act 14:23</a>). Titus is instructed to appoint and ordain elders in all the cities of Crete (<a href='B:630 1:5'>Tit 1:5</a>). (b) The qualifications of a presbuteros (<a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>) and of an episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) are to all intents and purposes identical (<a href='B:610 3:2-7'>1Ti 3:2-7</a>; <a href='B:630 1:6-9'>Tit 1:6-9</a>). (c) At the beginning of Philippians, Paul's greetings are to the bishops and the deacons (Php_1:1). It is quite impossible that Paul would have sent no greetings at all to the elders, who, as we have already seen, were in every Church; and therefore the bishops and the elders must be one and the same body of people. (d) When Paul was on his last journey to Jerusalem, he sent for the elders of Ephesus to meet him at Miletus (<a href='B:510 20:17'>Act 20:17</a>), and in the course of his talk to them he says that God has made them episkopoi (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) to feed the Church of God (<a href='B:510 20:28'>Act 20:28</a>). That is to say, he addresses precisely the same body of men first as elders and second as bishops or overseers. (e) When Peter is writing to his people, he talks to them as an elder to elders (<a href='B:670 5:1'>1Pe 5:1</a>), and then he goes on to say that their function is oversight of the flock of God (<a href='B:670 5:2'>1Pe 5:2</a>), and the word he uses for oversight, is the verb episkopein (<a href='S:G1983'>G1983</a>) from which episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) comes. All the evidence from the New Testament goes to prove that the presbuteros (<a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>) and the episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>), the elder and the bishop or overseer, were one and the same person.<p/>Two questions arise. First, if they were the same, why were there two names for them? The answer is that presbuteros (<a href='S:G4245'>G4245</a>) described these leaders of the Church as they personally were. They were the elder men, the older and respected members of the community. Episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>), on the other hand, described their function, which was to oversee the life and the work of the Church. The one word described the man; the other described his task.<p/>The second question is--if the elder and the bishop were originally the same, how did the bishop become what he did? The answer is simple. Inevitably the body of the elders would acquire a leader. Someone to lead would be essential and would inevitably emerge. The more organized the Church became, the more such a figure would be bound to arise. And the elder who stood out as leader came to be called the episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>), the superintendent of the Church. But it is to be noted that he was simply a leader amongst equals. He was in fact the elder whom circumstances and personal qualities had combined to make a leader for the work of the Church.<p/>It will be seen that to translate episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) by the word bishop in the New Testament now gives the word a misleading meaning. It is better to translate it overseer or superintendent.<p/><b>THE APPOINTMENT AND DUTIES OF THE LEADERS IN THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:610 3:1-7'>1Ti 3:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> This passage is further interesting in that it tells us something of the appointment and the duties of the leaders of the Church.<p/>(i) They were formally set apart for their office. Titus was to ordain elders in every Church (<a href='B:630 1:5'>Tit 1:5</a>). The office-bearer of the Church is not made an office-bearer in secret; he is set apart before the eyes of men; the honour of the Church is publicly delivered into his hands.<p/>(ii) They had to undergo a period of testing. They had first to be proved (<a href='B:610 3:10'>1Ti 3:10</a>). No one builds a bridge or a piece of machinery with metal which has not been tested. The Church might do well to be more strict than she is in the testing of those chosen for leadership.<p/>(iii) They were paid for the work which they had to do. The labourer was worthy of his hire (<a href='B:610 5:18'>1Ti 5:18</a>). The Christian leader does not work for pay, but, on the other hand, the duty of the Church which chose him for the work is to supply him with the means to live.<p/>(iv) They were liable to censure (<a href='B:610 5:19-22'>1Ti 5:19-22</a>). In the early Church the office-bearer had a double function. He was a leader of the Church; but he was also the servant of the Church. He had to answer for his stewardship. No Christian office-bearer must ever consider himself answerable to no one; he is answerable to God and to the people over whom God gave him the task of presiding.<p/>(v) They had the duty of presiding over the Christian assembly and of teaching the Christian congregation (<a href='B:610 5:17'>1Ti 5:17</a>). The Christian office-bearer has the double duty of administration and instruction. It may well be that one of the tragedies of the modern Church is that the administrative function of the office-bearer has usurped the teaching function almost entirely. It is, for instance, sad to see how few elders of the Church are actively engaged in the teaching work of Sunday schools.<p/>(vi) The office-bearer was not to be a recent convert. Two reasons are given for this advice. The first is quite clear. It is "in case he becomes inflated with a sense of his own importance." The second is not so clear. It is, as the Revised Standard Version has it, "lest he fall into the condemnation of the devil." There are three possible explanations of that strange phrase. (a) It was through his pride that Lucifer rebelled against God and was expelled from heaven. And this may simply be a second warning against the danger of pride. (b) It may mean that, if the too quickly advanced convert becomes guilty of pride, he gives the devil a chance to level his charges against him. A conceited Church office-bearer gives the devil a chance to say to critics of the Church: "Look! There's your Christian! There's your Church member! That's what an office-bearer is like!" (c) The word diabolos (<a href='S:G1228'>G1228</a>) has two meanings. It means "Devil," and that is the way in which the Revised Standard Version has taken it here; but it also means "slanderer." It is in fact the word used for slanderer in <a href='B:610 3:11'>1Ti 3:11</a>, where the women are forbidden to be slanderers. So then this phrase may mean that the recent convert, who has been appointed to office, and has acquired, as we say, a swelled head, gives opportunity to the slanderers. His unworthy conduct is ammunition for those who are ill-disposed to the Church. No matter how we take it, the point is that the conceited Church official is a bad debt to the Church.<p/>But, as the early Church saw it, the responsibility of the office-bearer did not begin and end in the Church. He had two other spheres of responsibility, and if he failed in them, he was bound also to fail in the Church.<p/>(i) His first sphere of duty was his own home. If a man did not know how to rule his own household, how could he engage upon the task of ruling the congregation of the Church? (<a href='B:610 3:5'>1Ti 3:5</a>). A man who had not succeeded in making a Christian home could hardly be expected to succeed in making a Christian congregation. A man who had not instructed his own family could hardly be the right man to instruct the family of the Church.<p/>(ii) The second sphere of responsibility was the world. He must be "well thought of by outsiders" (<a href='B:610 3:7'>1Ti 3:7</a>). He must be a man who has gained the respect of his fellow-men in the day-to-day business of life. Nothing has hurt the Church more than the sight of people who are active in it, whose business and social life belies the faith which they profess and the precepts which they teach. The Christian office-bearer must first of all be a good man.<p/><b>THE CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN LEADER</b> (<a href='B:610 3:1-7'>1Ti 3:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> We have just seen that the Christian leader must be a man who has won the respect of all. In this passage there is a great series of words and phrases describing his character; and it will be worth while to look at each in turn. Before we do that it will be interesting to set beside them two famous descriptions by great heathen thinkers of the good leader's character. Diogenes Laertius (7: 116-126) hands down to us the Stoic description. He must be married; he must be without pride; he must be temperate; and he must combine prudence of mind with excellence of outward behaviour. A writer called Onosander gives us the other. He must be prudent, self-controlled, sober, frugal, enduring in toil, intelligent, without love of money, neither young nor old, if possible the father of a family, able to speak competently, and of good reputation. It is interesting to see how the pagan and the Christian descriptions coincide.<p/>The Christian leader must be a man against whom no criticism can be made (anepileptos, <a href='S:G423'>G423</a>). Anepileptos is used of a position which is not open to attack, of a life which is not open to censure, of an art or technique which is so perfect that no fault can be found with it, of an agreement which is inviolable. The Christian leader must not only be free from such faults as can be assailed by definite charges; he must be of such fine character as to be even beyond criticism. The Rheims version of the New Testament translates this Greek word by the very unusual English word irreprehensible, unable to be found fault with. The Greeks themselves defined the word as meaning "affording nothing of which an adversary can take hold." Here is the ideal of perfection. We will not be able fully to attain to it; but the fact remains that the Christian leader must seek to offer to the world a life of such purity that he leaves no loophole even for criticism of himself.<p/>The Christian leader must have been married only once. The Greek literally means that he must be "the husband of one wife." Some take this to mean that the Christian leader must be a married man, and it is possible that the phrase could mean that. It is certainly true that a married man can be a recipient of confidences and a bringer of help in a way that a single man cannot be, and that he can bring a special understanding and sympathy to many a situation. Some few take it to mean that the Christian leader cannot marry a second time, even after his wife's death. In support they quote Paul's teaching in <a href='B:530 7:1-40'>1Co 7:1-40</a>. But in its context here we can be quite certain that the phrase means that the Christian leader must be a loyal husband, preserving marriage in all its purity. In later days the Apostolic Canons laid it down: "He who is involved in two marriages, after his baptism, or he who has taken a concubine, cannot be an episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>), a bishop."<p/>We may well ask why it should be necessary to lay down what looks obvious. We must understand the state of the world in which this was written. It has been said, and with much truth, that the only totally new virtue which Christianity brought into this world was chastity. In many ways the ancient world was in a state of moral chaos, even the Jewish world. Astonishing as it may seem, certain Jews still practised polygamy. In the Dialogue with Trypho, in which Justin Martyr discusses Christianity with a Jew, it is said that "it is possible for a Jew even now to have four or five wives" (Dialogue with Trypho, 134). Josephus can write: "By ancestral custom a man can live with more than one wife" (Antiquities of the Jews, 17: 1, 2).<p/>Apart altogether from these unusual cases, divorce was tragically easy in the Jewish world. The Jews had the highest ideals of marriage. They said that a man must surrender his life rather than commit murder, idolatry or adultery. They had the belief that marriages are made in heaven. In the story of the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca it is said: "The thing comes from the Lord" (<a href='B:10 24:50'>Gen 24:50</a>). This was taken to mean that the marriage was arranged by God. So it is said in <a href='B:240 19:14'>Pro 19:14</a>: "A prudent wife is from the Lord." In the story of Tobit, the angel says to Tobit: "Fear not for she was prepared for thee from the beginning" (Tob_6:17). The Rabbis said: "God sits in heaven arranging marriages." "Forty days before the child is formed a heavenly voice proclaims its mate."<p/>For all that, the Jewish law allowed divorce. Marriage was indeed the ideal but divorce was permitted. Marriage was "inviolable but not indissoluble." The Jews held that once the marriage ideal had been shattered by cruelty or infidelity or incompatibility, it was far better to allow a divorce and to permit the two to make a fresh start. The great tragedy was that the wife had no rights whatsoever. Josephus says: "With us it is lawful for a husband to dissolve a marriage, but a wife, if she departs from her husband, cannot marry another, unless her former husband put her away" (Antiquities of the Jews, 15: 8, 7). In a case of divorce by consent, in the time of the New Testament, all that was required was two witnesses, and no court case at all. A husband could send his wife away for any cause; at the most a wife could petition the court to urge her husband to write her a bill of divorcement, but it could not compel him even to do that.<p/>In face of that situation, things came to such a pass that "women refused to contract marriages, and men grew grey and celibate." A brake was put upon this process by legislation introduced by Simon ben Shetah. A Jewish wife always brought her husband a dowry which was called Kethubah. Simon enacted that a man had unrestricted use of the Kethubah, so long as he remained married to his wife, but on divorce he was absolutely liable to repay it, even if he had "to sell his hair" to do so. This checked divorce; but the Jewish system was always vitiated by the fact that the wife had no rights.<p/>In the heathen world things were infinitely worse. There, too, according to Roman law, the wife had no rights. Cato said: "If you were to take your wife in adultery, you could kill her with impunity, without any court judgment; but if you were involved in adultery, she would not dare to lift a finger against you, for it is unlawful." Things grew so bad, and marriage grew so irksome, that in 131 B.C. a well-known Roman called Metellus Macedonicus made a statement which Augustus was afterwards to quote: "If we could do without wives, we would be rid of that nuisance. But since nature has decreed that we can neither live comfortably with them, nor live at all without them, we must look rather to our permanent interests than to passing pleasure."<p/>Even the Roman poets saw the dreadfulness of the situation. "Ages rich in sin, wrote Horace, "were the first to taint marriage and family life. From this source the evil has overflowed." "Sooner will the seas be dried up, said Propertius, "and the stars be raft from heaven, than our women reformed." Ovid wrote his famous, or infamous, book The Art of love, and never from beginning to end mentions married love. He wrote cynically: "These women alone are pure who are unsolicited, and a man who is angry at his wife's love affair is nothing but a rustic boor." Seneca declared: "Anyone whose affairs have not become notorious, and who does not pay a married woman a yearly fee, is despised by women as a mere lover of girls; in fact husbands are got as a mere decoy for lovers." "Only the ugly, he said, "are loyal." "A woman who is content to have only two followers is a paragon of virtue." Tacitus commended the supposedly barbarian German tribes for "not laughing at evil, and not making seduction the spirit of the age." When a marriage took place, the home to which the couple were going was decorated with green bay leaves. Juvenal said that there were those who entered on divorce before the bays of welcome had faded. In 19 B.C. a man named Quintus Lucretius Vespillo erected a tablet to his wife which said: "Seldom do marriages last until death undivorced; but ours continued happily for forty-one years." The happy marriage was the astonishing exception.<p/>Ovid and Pliny had three wives; Caesar and Antony had four; Sulla and Pompey had five; Herod had nine; Cicero's daughter Tullia had three husbands. The Emperor Nero was the third husband of Poppaea and the fifth husband of Statilla Messalina.<p/>It was not for nothing that the Pastorals laid it down that the Christian leader must be the husband of one wife. In a world where even the highest places were deluged with immorality, the Christian Church must demonstrate the chastity, the stability and the sanctity of the Christian home.<p/><b>THE CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN LEADER</b> (<a href='B:610 3:1-7'>1Ti 3:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The Christian leader must be sober (nephalios, <a href='S:G3524'>G3524</a>) and he must not over-indulge in wine, (paroinos, <a href='S:G3943'>G3943</a>). In the ancient world wine was continually used. Where the water supply was very inadequate and sometimes dangerous, wine was the most natural drink of all. It is wine which cheers the hearts of gods and men (<a href='B:70 9:13'>Jdg 9:13</a>). In the restoration of Israel she will plant her vineyards and drink her wine (<a href='B:370 9:14'>Amo 9:14</a>). Strong drink is given to those who are ready to perish, and wine to those whose hearts are heavy (<a href='B:240 31:6'>Pro 31:6</a>).<p/>This is not to say that the ancient world was not fully alive to the dangers of strong drink. Proverbs speaks of the disaster which comes to the man who looks on the wine when it is red (<a href='B:240 23:29-35'>Pro 23:29-35</a>). Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler (<a href='B:240 20:1'>Pro 20:1</a>). There are terrible stories of what happened to people through over-indulgence in wine. There is the case of Noah (<a href='B:10 9:18-27'>Gen 9:18-27</a>); of Lot (<a href='B:10 19:30-38'>Gen 19:30-38</a>); of Amnon (<a href='B:100 13:28-29'>2Sa 13:28-29</a>). Although the ancient world used wine as the commonest of all drinks, it used it most abstemiously. When wine was drunk, it was drunk in the proportion of two parts of wine to three parts of water. A man who was drunken would be disgraced in ordinary heathen society, let alone in the Church.<p/>The interesting thing is the double meaning that both words in this section possess. Nephalios (<a href='S:G3524'>G3524</a>) means sober, but it also means watchful and vigilant; paroinos (<a href='S:G3943'>G3943</a>) means addicted to wine, but it also means quarrelsome and violent. The point that the Pastorals make here is that the Christian must allow himself no indulgence which would lessen his Christian vigilance or soil his Christian conduct.<p/>There follow two Greek words which describe two great qualities which must characterize the Christian leader. He must be prudent (sophron, <a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>) and well-behaved (kosmios, <a href='S:G2887'>G2887</a>).<p/>We have translated sophron (<a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>) by prudent, but it is virtually untranslatable. It is variously translated of sound mind, discreet, prudent, self-controlled, chaste, having complete control over sensual desires. The Greeks derived it from two words which mean to keep one's mind safe and sound. The corresponding noun is sophrosune (<a href='S:G4997'>G4997</a>), and the Greeks wrote and thought much about it. It is the opposite of intemperance and lack of self-control. Plato defined it as "the mastery of pleasure and desire." Aristotle defined it as "that power by which the pleasures of the body are used as law commands." Philo defined it as "a certain limiting and ordering of the desires, which eliminates those which are external and excessive, and which adorns those which are necessary with timeliness and moderation." Pythagoras said that it was "the foundation on which the soul rests." Iamblichus said that "it is the safeguard of the most excellent habits in life." Euripides said that it was "the fairest gift of God." Jeremy Taylor called it "reason's girdle and passion's bridle." Trench describes sophrosune (<a href='S:G4997'>G4997</a>) as "the condition of entire command over the passions and desires, so that they receive no further allowance than that which law and right reason admit and approve." Gilbert Murray wrote of sophron (<a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>) : "There is a way of thinking which destroys and a way which saves. The man or woman who is sophron (<a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>) walks among the beauties and perils of the world, feeling love, joy, anger, and the rest; and through all he has that in his mind which saves. Whom does it save? Not him only, but, as we should say, the whole situation. It saves the imminent evil from coming to be." E. F. Brown quotes in illustration of sophrosune (<a href='S:G4997'>G4997</a>) a prayer of Thomas Aquinas which asks for "a quieting of all our impulses, fleshly and spiritual."<p/>The man who is sophron (<a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>) has every part of his nature under perfect control, which is to say that the man who is sophron (<a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>) is the man in whose heart Christ reigns supreme.<p/>The companion word is kosmios (<a href='S:G2887'>G2887</a>), which we have translated well-behaved. If a man is kosmios (<a href='S:G2887'>G2887</a>) in his outer conduct it is because he is sophron (<a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>) in his inner life. Kosmios (<a href='S:G2887'>G2887</a>) means orderly, honest, decorous. In Greek it has two special usages. It is common in tributes and in inscriptions to the dead. And it is commonly used to describe the man who is a good citizen. Plato defines the man who is kosmios (<a href='S:G2887'>G2887</a>) as "the citizen who is quiet in the land, who duly fulfils in his place and order the duties which are incumbent upon him as such." This word has more in it than simply good behaviour. It describes the man whose life is beautiful and in whose character all things are harmoniously integrated.<p/>The leader of the Church must be a man who is sophron (<a href='S:G4998'>G4998</a>), his every instinct and desire under perfect control; he must be a man who is kosmios (<a href='S:G2887'>G2887</a>), his inner control issuing in outward beauty. The leader must be one in whose heart Christ's power reigns and on whose life Christ's beauty shines.<p/><b>THE CHARACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN LEADER</b> (<a href='B:610 3:1-7'>1Ti 3:1-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The Christian leader must be hospitable (philoxenos, <a href='S:G5382'>G5382</a>). This is a quality on which the New Testament lays much stress. Paul bids the Roman Church to "practise hospitality" (<a href='B:520 12:13'>Rom 12:13</a>). "Practise hospitality ungrudgingly to one another, says Peter (<a href='B:670 4:9'>1Pe 4:9</a>). In the Shepherd of Hermas, one of the very early Christian writings, it is laid down: "The episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>) must be hospitable, a man who gladly and at all times welcomes into his house the servants of God." The Christian leader must be a man with an open heart and an open house.<p/>The ancient world was very careful of the rights of the guest. The stranger was under the protection of Zeus Xenios, the Protector of Strangers. in the ancient world, inns were notoriously bad. In one of Aristophanes' plays Heracles asks his companion where they will lodge for the night; and the answer is: "Where the fleas are fewest." Plato speaks of the inn-keeper being like a pirate who holds his guests to ransom. Inns tended to be dirty and expensive and, above all, immoral. The ancient world had a system of what were called Guest Friendships. Over generations families had arrangements to give each other accommodation and hospitality. Often the members of the families came in the end to be unknown to each other by sight and identified themselves by means of what were called tallies. The stranger seeking accommodation would produce one half of some object; the host would possess the other half of the tally; and when the two halves fitted each other the host knew that he had found his guest, and the guest knew that the host was indeed the ancestral friend of his household.<p/>In the Christian Church there were wandering teachers and preachers who needed hospitality. There were also many slaves with no homes of their own to whom it was a great privilege to have the right of entry to a Christian home. It was of the greatest blessing that Christians should have Christian homes ever open to them in which they could meet people like-minded to themselves. We live in a world where there are still many who are far from home, many who are strangers in a strange place, many who live in conditions where it is hard to be a Christian. The door of the Christian home and the welcome of the Christian heart should be open to all such.<p/>The Christian leader must be possessed of an aptitude for teaching (didaktikos, <a href='S:G1317'>G1317</a>). It has been said that his duty is "to preach to the unconverted and to teach the converted." There are two things to be said about this. It is one of the disasters of modern times that the teaching ministry of the Church is not being exercised as it should. There is any amount of topical preaching and any amount of exhortation; but there is little use in exhorting a man to be a Christian when he does not know what being a Christian means. Instruction is a primary duty of the Christian preacher and leader. The second thing is this. The finest and the most effective teaching is done not by speaking but by being. Even the man with no gift of words can teach, by living in such a way that in him men see the reflection of the Master. A saint has been defined as someone "in whom Christ lives again."<p/>The Christian leader must not be a man who assaults others (plektes, <a href='S:G4131'>G4131</a>, a striker). That this instruction was not unnecessary is seen in one of the very early regulations of the Apostolic Canons: "A bishop, priest or deacon who smites the faithful when they err, or the unbelievers when they commit injury, and desires by such means as this to terrify them, we command to be deposed; for nowhere hath the Lord taught us this. When he was reviled, he reviled not again, but the contrary. When he was smitten, he smote not again; when he suffered, he threatened not." It will not be likely that any Christian leader will nowadays strike another Christian, but the fact remains that blustering, bullying, irritable, bad-tempered speech or action is forbidden to the Christian.<p/>The Christian leader must be gentle. The Greek is epieikes (<a href='S:G1933'>G1933</a>), another of these completely untranslatable words. The noun is epieikeia (<a href='S:G1932'>G1932</a>) and Aristotle describes it as "that which corrects justice" and as that which "is just and better than justice." He said that it was that quality which corrects the law when the law errs because of its generality. What he means is that sometimes it may actually be unjust to apply the strict letter of the law. Trench said that epieikeia (<a href='S:G1932'>G1932</a>) means "retreating from the letter of right better to preserve the spirit of right" and is "the spirit which recognizes the impossibility of cleaving to all formal law...that recognizes the danger that ever waits upon the assertion of legal rights, lest they should be pushed into moral wrongs...the spirit which rectifies and redresses the injustice of justice." Aristotle describes in full the action of epieikeia (<a href='S:G1932'>G1932</a>) : "To pardon human failings; to look to the law-giver, not to the law; to the intention, not to the action; to the whole, not to the part; to the character of the actor in the long run and not in the present moment; to remember good rather than evil, and the good that one has received rather than the good that one has done; to bear being injured; to wish to settle a matter by words rather than deeds." If there is a matter under dispute, it can be settled by consulting a book of practice and procedure, or it can be settled by consulting Jesus Christ. If there is a matter of debate, it can be settled in law, or it can be settled in love. The atmosphere of many a Church would be radically changed if there was more epieikeia (<a href='S:G1932'>G1932</a>) within it.<p/>The Christian leader must be peaceable (amachos, <a href='S:G269'>G269</a>). The Greek word means disinclined to fight. There are people who, as we might put it, are "trigger-happy" in their relationships with other people. But the real Christian leader wants nothing so much as he wants peace with his fellow-men.<p/>The Christian leader must be free from the love of money. He will never do anything simply for profit's sake. He will know that there are values which are beyond all money price.<p/><b>THE MEN OF CHRISTIAN SERVICE</b> (<a href='B:610 3:8-10'>1Ti 3:8-10</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:610 3:12-13'>1Ti 3:12-13</a>)


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,12,13 In the same way, the deacons must be men of dignity, men who are straight, men who are not given to over-indulgence in wine, men who are not prepared to stoop to disgraceful ways of making money; they must hold the secret of the faith which has been revealed to them with a clear conscience. The deacons too must first of all be put upon probation, and, if they emerge blameless from the test, let them become deacons.... Deacons must be married only once; they must manage their own children and their own homes well. For those who make a fine job of the office of deacon win for themselves a fine degree of honour, and they gain much boldness in their faith in Christ Jesus.<p/></i><p/>In the early Church the function of the deacons lay much more in the sphere of practical service. The Christian Church inherited a magnificent organization of charitable help from the Jews. No nation has ever had such a sense of responsibility for the poorer brother and sister as the Jews. The synagogue had a regular organization for helping such people. The Jews rather discouraged the giving of individual help to individual people. They preferred that help should be given through the community and especially through the synagogue.<p/>Each Friday in every community two official collectors went round the markets and called on each house, collecting donations for the poor in money and in goods. The material so collected was distributed to those in need by a committee of two, or more if necessary. The poor of the community were given enough food for fourteen meals, that is for two meals a day for the week; but no one could receive from this fund if he already possessed a week's food in the house. This fund for the poor was called the Kuppah, or the basket. In addition to this there was a daily collection of food from house to house for those who were actually in emergency need that day. This fund was called the Tamhui or the tray. The Christian Church inherited this charitable organization, and no doubt it was the task of the deacons to attend to it.<p/>Many of the qualifications of the deacon are the same as for the episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>). They are to be men of dignified character; they are to be abstemious; they are not to soil their hands with disreputable ways of making money; they have to undergo a test and a time of probation; they must practise what they preach, so that they can hold the Christian. faith with a clear conscience.<p/>One new qualification is added; they are to be straight. The Greek is that they must not be dilogos (<a href='S:G1351'>G1351</a>), and dilogos means speaking with two voices, saying one thing to one and another to another. In The Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan puts into By-ends mouth a description of the people who live in the town of Fair-speech. There is my Lord Turn-about, my Lord Time-Server, my Lord Fair-speech, after whose ancestors the town was named, Mr. Smooth-man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Any-thing; and the parson of the parish, Mr. Two-tongues. A deacon, in his going from house to house, and in his dealing with those who needed charity, had to be a straight man. Again and again he would be tempted to evade issues by a little timely hypocrisy and smooth speaking. But the man who would do the work of the Christian Church must be straight.<p/>It is clear that the man who performs well the office of deacon can look for promotion to the high office of elder, and will gain such a confidence in the faith that he can look any man in the face.<p/><b>WOMEN WHO SERVE THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:610 3:11'>1Ti 3:11</a>)<p/><i> 3:11 In the same way, the women must be dignified; they must not be given to slanderous gossip; they must be sober; they must be in all things reliable.<p/></i><p/>As far as the Greek goes, this could refer to the wives of the deacons, or to women engaged in a similar service. It seems far more likely that it refers to women who are also engaged upon this work of charity. There must have been acts of kindness and of help which only a woman could properly do for another woman. Certainly in the early Church there were deaconesses. They had the duty of instructing female converts and in particular of presiding and attending at their baptism, which was by total immersion.<p/>It was necessary that such women workers should be warned against slanderous gossip and bidden to be absolutely reliable. When a young doctor graduates and before he begins to practise, he takes the Hippocratic oath, and part of that oath is a pledge never to repeat anything that he has heard in the house of a patient, or anything that he has heard about a patient, even if he has heard it on the street. In the work of helping the poor, things might easily be heard and be repeated and infinite damage done. It is not any insult to women that the Pastorals specially forbid gossip to them. In the nature of things a woman runs more risk of gossip than a man. A man's work takes him out into the world; a woman of necessity lives in a narrower sphere and for that very reason has fewer things to talk about. This increases the danger of talking about the personal relationships from which slanderous gossip arises. Whether man or woman, a tale-bearing, confidence-repeating Christian is a monstrous thing.<p/>In Greek civilization it was essential that the women workers of the Church should preserve their dignity. The respectable Greek woman lived in the greatest seclusion; she never went out alone; she never even shared meals with her men folk. Pericles said that the duty of an Athenian mother was to live so retired a life that her name should never be mentioned among men for praise or blame. Xenophon tells how a country gentleman who was a friend of his said about the young wife whom he had just married and whom he dearly loved. "What was she likely to know when I married her? Why, she was not yet fifteen when I introduced her to my house, and she had been brought up always under the strictest supervision; as far as could be managed, she had not been allowed to see anything, hear anything or ask any questions." That is the way in which respectable Greek girls were brought up. Xenophon gives a vivid picture of one of these girl-wives gradually "growing accustomed to her husband and becoming sufficiently tame to hold conversation with him."<p/>Christianity emancipated women; it liberated them from a kind of slavery. But there were dangers. She who was liberated might misuse her new-found freedom; the respectable world might be shocked by such an emancipation; and so the Church had to lay down its regulations. It was by wisely using freedom, and not misusing it, that women came to hold the proud position in the Church which they hold today.<p/><b>PRIVILEGE & RESPONSIBILITY OF LIFE WITHIN THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:610 3:14-15'>1Ti 3:14-15</a>)


text:
 I am writing these things to you, hoping, as I write, to come to you soon. But I am writing, so that, if I am delayed, you may know how to behave yourselves in the household of God, which is the assembly of the living God, and the pillar and buttress of the truth.<p/></i><p/>Here in one phrase is the reason why the Pastoral Epistles were written; they were written to tell men how to behave within the Church. The word for to behave is anastrephesthai (<a href='S:G390'>G390</a>) ; it describes what we might call a man's walk and conversation. It describes his whole life and character; but it specially describes him in his relationships with other people. As it has been said, the word in itself lays it down that a church member's personal character must be excellent and that his personal relationships with other people should be a true fellowship. A church congregation is a body of people who are friends with God and friends with each other. Paul goes on to use four words which describe four great functions of the Church.<p/>(i) The Church is the household (oikos, <a href='S:G3624'>G3624</a>) of God. First and foremost it must be a family. In a despatch written after one of his great naval victories, Nelson ascribed his victory to the fact that he "had the happiness to command a band of brothers." Unless a church is a band of brothers it is not a true church at all. Love of God can exist only where brotherly love exists.<p/>(ii) The Church is the assembly (ekklesia, <a href='S:G1577'>G1577</a>) of the living God. The word ekklesia (<a href='S:G1577'>G1577</a>) literally means a company of people who have been called out. It does not mean that they have been selected or picked out. In Athens the ekklesia (<a href='S:G1577'>G1577</a>) was the governing body of the city; and its membership consisted of all the citizens met in assembly. But, very naturally, at no time did all attend. The summons went out to come to the Assembly of the City, but only some citizens answered it and came. God's call has gone out to every man; but only some have accepted it; and they are the ekklesia (<a href='S:G1577'>G1577</a>), the Church. It is not that God has been selective. The invitation comes to all; but to an invitation there must be a response.<p/>(iii) The Church is the pillar of the truth (stulos, <a href='S:G4769'>G4769</a>). In Ephesus, to which these letters were written, the word pillar would have a special significance. The greatest glory of Ephesus was the Temple of Diana or Artemis. "Great is Diana of the Ephesians" (<a href='B:510 19:28'>Act 19:28</a>). It was one of the seven wonders of the world. One of its features was its pillars. It contained one hundred and twenty-seven pillars, every one of them the gift of a king. All were made of marble, and some were studded with jewels and overlaid with gold. The people of Ephesus knew well how beautiful a thing a pillar could be. It may well be that the idea of the word pillar here is not so much support--that is contained in buttress--as display. Often the statue of a famous man is set on the top of a pillar that it may stand out above all ordinary things and so be clearly seen, even from a distance. The idea here is that the Church's duty is to hold up the truth in such a way that all men may see it.<p/>(iv) The Church is the buttress (hedraioma, <a href='S:G1477'>G1477</a>) of the truth. The buttress is the support of the building. It keeps it standing intact. In a world which does not wish to face the truth, the Church holds it up for all to see. In a world which would often gladly eliminate unwelcome truth, the Church supports it against all who would seek to destroy it.<p/><b>A HYMN OF THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:610 3:16'>1Ti 3:16</a>)<p/><i> 3:16 As everyone must confess, great is the secret which God has revealed to us in our religion:<p/>He who was manifested in the flesh: He who was vindicated by the Spirit: He who was seen by angels: He who has been preached among the nations: He in whom men have believed all over the world: He who was taken up into glory.<p/></i><p/>The great interest of this passage is that here we have a fragment of one of the hymns of the early Church. It is a setting of belief in Christ to poetry and to music, a hymn in which men sang their creed. We cannot expect in poetry the precision of statement for which we would look in a creed; but we must try to see what each line in this hymn is saying to us.<p/>(i) He who was manifested in the flesh. Right at the beginning it stresses the real humanity of Jesus. It says: "Look at Jesus, and you will see the mind and the heart and the action of God, in a form that men can understand."<p/>(ii) He who was vindicated by the Spirit. This is a difficult line. There are three things it may mean. (a) It may mean that all through his earthly days Jesus was kept sinless by the power of the Spirit. It is the Spirit who gives a man guidance; our error is that we so often refuse his guidance. It was Jesus' perfect submission to the Spirit of God which kept him without sin. (b) It may mean that Jesus' claims were vindicated by the action of the Spirit who dwelt in him. When Jesus was accused by the scribes and Pharisees of effecting cures by the power of the devil, his answer was: "If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come upon you" (<a href='B:470 12:28'>Mat 12:28</a>). The power that was in Jesus was the power of the Spirit, and the mighty acts he performed were the vindication of the tremendous claims which he made. (c) It may be that this is a reference to the Resurrection. Men took Jesus and crucified him as a criminal upon a cross; but through the power of the Spirit he rose again; the verdict of men was demonstrated to be false, and he was vindicated. No matter how we take this line, its meaning is that the Spirit is the power who proved Jesus to be what he claimed to be.<p/>(iii) He who was seen by angels. Again there are three possible meanings. (a) It may be a reference to Jesus' life before he came to earth. (b) It may be a reference to his life on earth. Even on earth the hosts of heaven were looking on at his tremendous contest with evil. (c) It may connect with the belief of all men in the time of Jesus that the air was full of demonic and angelic powers. Many of these powers were hostile to God and to man, and bent on the destruction of Jesus. Paul at least once argued that they were bent on the destruction of Jesus through ignorance, and that Jesus brought to them and to men the wisdom which had been hidden since the world began (<a href='B:530 2:7-8'>1Co 2:7-8</a>). This phrase may mean that Jesus brought the truth even to the angelic and demonic powers who had never known it. However we take it, it means that the work of Jesus is so tremendous that it includes both heaven and earth.<p/>(iv) He who has been preached among the nations. Here we have the great truth that Jesus was the exclusive possession of no race. He was not the Messiah who had come to raise the Jews to earthly greatness, but the Saviour of the whole wide world.<p/>(v) He in whom men have believed all over the world. Here is an almost miraculous truth stated with utter simplicity. After Jesus had died and risen again and ascended to his glory, the number of his followers was one hundred and twenty (<a href='B:510 1:15'>Act 1:15</a>). All that his followers had to offer was the story of a Galilaean carpenter who had been crucified on a hilltop in Palestine as a criminal. And yet before seventy years had passed that story had gone out to the ends of the earth and men of every nation accepted this crucified Jesus as Saviour and Lord. In this simple phrase there is the whole wonder of the expansion of the Church, an expansion which on any human grounds is incredible.<p/>(vi) He who was taken up into glory. This is a reference to the Ascension. The story of Jesus begins in heaven and ends in heaven. He lived as a servant; he was branded as a criminal; he was crucified on a cross; he rose with the nailprints still upon him; but the end is glory. 


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 The Spirit clearly says that in the later times some will desert from the faith, through paying attention to spirits who can do nothing but lead them astray, and to teachings which come from the demons, teachings of false men whose characteristic is insincerity, teachings of men whose conscience has been branded with the mark of Satan, teachings of those who forbid marriage, and who order men to abstain from foods which God created in order that men might gratefully take their share of them in the company of those who believe and who really know the truth; for everything that God has made is good, and nothing is to be rejected, but it is to be gratefully received; for it is hallowed by the word of God and by prayer.<p/></i><p/>The Christian Church had inherited from the Jews the belief that in this world things would be a great deal worse before they were better. The Jews always thought of time in terms of two ages. There was this present age, which was altogether bad and in the grip of the evil powers; there was the age to come, which was to be the perfect age of God and of goodness. But the one age would not pass into the other without a last convulsive struggle. In between the two ages would come The Day of the Lord. On that day the world would be shaken to its foundations; there would be a last supreme battle with evil, a last universal judgment, and then the new day would dawn.<p/>The New Testament writers took over that picture. Being Jews, they had been brought up in it. One of the expected features of the last age was heresies and false teachers. "Many false prophets will arise, and lead many astray" (<a href='B:470 24:11'>Mat 24:11</a>). "False Christs and false prophets will arise, and show signs and wonders, to lead astray, if possible, the elect" (<a href='B:480 13:22'>Mar 13:22</a>). In these last days Paul looks for the emergence of "the man of sin, the son of perdition," who would set himself up against God (<a href='B:600 2:3'>2Th 2:3</a>).<p/>Into the Church at Ephesus such false teachers had come. The way in which their false teaching is regarded in this passage should make us think very seriously. At that time men believed in evil spirits who haunted the air and were out to ruin men. It was from them that this false teaching came. But though it came from the demons, it came through men. It came through men whose characteristic was a smooth hypocrisy and whose consciences had been branded by Satan. It sometimes happened that a slave was branded with a mark identifying him as belonging to a certain owner. These false teachers bear upon their consciences the very brand of Satan, marking them out as his property.<p/>Here is the threatening and the terrible thing. God is always searching for men who will be his instruments in the world; but the terrible fact is that the forces of evil are also looking for men to use. Here is the terrible responsibility of manhood. Men may accept the service of God or the service of the devil. Whose service are they to choose?<p/><b>ENSLAVERS OF MEN AND INSULTERS OF GOD</b> (<a href='B:610 4:1-5'>1Ti 4:1-5</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> The heretics of Ephesus were propagating a heresy with very definite consequences for life. As we have already seen, these heretics were Gnostics; and the essence of Gnosticism was that spirit is altogether good and matter altogether evil. One of the consequences was that there were men who preached that everything to do with the body was evil and that everything in the world was evil. In Ephesus this issued in two definite errors. The heretics insisted that men must, as far as possible, abstain from food, for food was material and therefore evil; food ministered to the body and the body was evil. They also insisted that a man must abstain from marriage, for the instincts of the body were evil and must be entirely suppressed.<p/>This was an ever-recurring heresy in the Church; in every generation men arose who tried to be stricter than God. When the Apostolic Canons came to be written, it was necessary to set it down in black and white: "If any overseer, priest or deacon, or anyone on the priestly list, abstains from marriage and flesh and wine, not on the ground of asceticism (that is, for the sake of discipline), but through abhorrence of them as evil in themselves, forgetting that all things are very good, and that God made man male and female, but blaspheming and slandering the workmanship of God, either let him amend, or be deposed and cast out of the Church. Likewise a layman also" (Apostolic Canons 51). Irenaeus, writing towards the end of the second century, tells how certain followers of Saturninus "declare that marriage and generation are from Satan. Many likewise abstain from animal food, and draw away multitudes by a feigned temperance of this kind" (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1, 24, 2). This kind of thing came to a head in the monks and hermits of the fourth century. They went away and lived in the Egyptian desert, entirely cut off from men. They spent their lives mortifying the flesh. One never ate cooked food and was famous for his "fleshlessness." Another stood all night by a jutting crag so that it was impossible for him to sleep. Another was famous because he allowed his body to become so dirty and neglected that vermin dropped from him as he walked. Another deliberately ate salt in midsummer and then abstained from drinking water. "A clean body, they said, "necessarily means an unclean soul."<p/>The answer to these men was that by doing things like that they were insulting God, for he is the creator of the world and repeatedly his creation is said to be good. "And God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good" (<a href='B:10 1:31'>Gen 1:31</a>). "Every moving thing that lives shall be meat for you" (<a href='B:10 9:3'>Gen 9:3</a>). "God created man in his own image...male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" (<a href='B:10 1:27-28'>Gen 1:27-28</a>).<p/>But all God's gifts have to be used in a certain way.<p/>(i) They have to be used in the memory that they are gifts of God There are things which come to us so unfailingly that we begin to forget that they are gifts and begin to take them as rights. We are to remember that all that we have is a gift from God and that there is not a living thing which could have life apart from him.<p/>(ii) They have to be used in sharing. All selfish use is forbidden. No man can monopolize God's gifts; every man must share them.<p/>(iii) They are to be used with gratitude. Always there is to be grace before meat. The Jew always said his grace. He had a grace for different things. When he ate fruits he said: "Blessed art thou, King of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the tree." When he drank wine he said: "Blessed art thou, King of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the vine." When he ate vegetables he said: "Blessed art thou, King of the Universe, who createst the fruit of the earth." When he ate bread he said: "Blessed art thou, King of the Universe, who bringest forth bread from the ground." The very fact that we thank God for it makes a thing sacred. Not even the demons can touch it when it has been touched by the Spirit of God.<p/>The true Christian does not serve God by enslaving himself with rules and regulations and insulting his creation; he serves him by gratefully accepting his good gifts and remembering that this is a world where God made all things well and by never forgetting to share God's gifts with others.<p/><b>ADVICE TO AN ENVOY OF CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:610 4:6-10'>1Ti 4:6-10</a>)


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 If you lay these things before the brothers, you will be a fine servant of Jesus Christ, if you feed your life on the words of faith, and of the fine teaching of which you have been a student and a follower. Refuse to have anything to do with irreligious stories like the tales old women tell to children. Train yourself towards the goal of true godliness. The training of the body has only a limited value; but training in godliness has a universal value for mankind, because it has the promise of life in this present age, and life in the age to come. This is a saying which deserves to be accepted by all. The reason why we toil and struggle so hard is that we have set our hopes on the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, and especially of those who believe.<p/></i><p/>This passage is close--packed with practical advice, not only for Timothy, but for any servant of the Church who is charged with the duty of work and leadership.<p/>(i) It tells us how to instruct others. The word used for laying these things before the brothers is most suggestive (hupotithesthai, <a href='S:G5294'>G5294</a>). It does not mean to issue orders but rather to advise, to suggest. It is a gentle, humble, and modest word. It means that the teacher must never dogmatically and pugnaciously lay down the law. It means that he must act rather as if he was reminding men of what they already knew or suggesting to them, not that they should learn from him, but that they should discover from their own hearts what is right. Guidance given in gentleness will always be more effective than bullying instructions laid down with force. Men may be led when they will refuse to be driven.<p/>(ii) It tells us how to face the task of teaching. Timothy is told that he must feed his life on the words of faith. No man can give out without taking in. He who would teach must be continually learning. It is the reverse of the truth that when a man becomes a teacher he ceases to be a learner; he must daily know Jesus Christ better before he can bring him to others.<p/>(iii) It tells us what to avoid. Timothy is to avoid profitless tales like those which old women tell to children. It is easy to get lost in side-issues and to get entangled in things which are at best embroideries. It is on the great central truths that a man must ever feed his mind and nourish his faith.<p/>(iv) It tells us what to seek. Timothy is told that as an athlete trains his body, so the Christian must train his soul. It is not that bodily fitness is despised. The Christian faith believes that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. But there are certain things in Paul's mind. First, in the ancient world, especially in Greece, the gymnasia were dangerous places. Every town had its gymnasium; for the Greek youth between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, gymnastics were the main part of education. But the ancient world was riddled with homosexuality and the gymnasia were notorious as hotbeds of that particular sin. Second, Paul is pleading for a sense of proportion. Physical training is good, and even essential; but its use is limited. It develops. only part of a man; and it produces only results which last for so short a time, for the body passes away. Training in godliness develops the whole man in body, mind and spirit, and its results affect not only time, but eternity as well. The Christian is not the athlete of the gymnasium, he is the athlete of God. The greatest of the Greeks well recognized this. Isocrates wrote: "No ascetic ought to train his body as a king ought to train his soul." "Train yourself by submitting willingly to toils, so that when they come on you unwillingly you will be able to endure them."<p/>(v) It shows us the basis of the whole matter. No one has ever claimed that the Christian life is an easy way; but its goal is God It is because life is lived in the presence of God and ends in his still nearer presence, that the Christian is willing to endure as he does. The greatness of the goal makes the toil worth while.<p/><b>THE ONLY WAY TO SILENCE CRITICISM</b> (<a href='B:610 4:11-16'>1Ti 4:11-16</a>)


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 Make it your business to hand on and to teach these commandments. Do not give anyone a chance to despise you because you are young; but in your words and in your conduct, in love, in loyalty and in purity, show yourself an example of what believing people should be. Until I come, devote your attention to the public reading of the scriptures, to exhortation and to teaching. Do not neglect the special gift which was given to you, when the voices of the prophets picked you out for the charge which has been given to you, when the body of the elders laid their hands upon you. Think about these things; find your whole life in them, that your progress may be evident to all. Take heed to yourself and to your teaching; stick to them; for if you do, you will save yourself and those who hear you.<p/></i><p/>One of the difficulties Timothy had to overcome was that he was young. We are not to think of him as a mere stripling. After all, it was fifteen years since he had first become Paul's helper. The word used for youth (neotes, <a href='S:G3503'>G3503</a>) can in Greek describe anyone of military age, that is up to the age of forty. But the Church has generally liked its office-bearers to be men of maturity. The Apostolic Canons laid it down that a man was not to become a bishop until he was over fifty, for by then "he will be past youthful disorders." Timothy was young in comparison with Paul, and there would be many who would watch him with a critical eye. When the elder William Pitt was making a speech in the House of Commons at the age of thirty-three, he said: "The atrocious crime of being a young man...I will neither attempt to palliate or deny." The Church has always regarded youth with a certain suspicion, and under that suspicion Timothy inevitably fell.<p/>The advice given to Timothy is the hardest of all to follow, and yet it was the only possible advice. It was that he must silence criticism by conduct. Plato was once falsely accused of dishonourable conduct. "Well, he said, "we must live in such a way that all men will see that the charge is false." Verbal defences may not silence criticism; conduct will. What then were to be the marks of Timothy's conduct?<p/>(i) First, there was to be love. Agape (<a href='S:G26'>G26</a>), the Greek word for the greatest of the Christian virtues, is largely untranslatable. Its real meaning is unconquerable benevolence. If a man has agape (<a href='S:G26'>G26</a>), no matter what other people do to him or say of him, he will seek nothing but their good. He will never be bitter, never resentful, never vengeful; he will never allow himself to hate; he will never refuse to forgive. Clearly this is the kind of love which takes the whole of a man's personality to achieve. Ordinarily love is something which we cannot help. Love of our nearest and dearest is an instinctive thing. The love of a man for a maid is an experience unsought. Ordinarily love is a thing of the heart; but clearly this Christian love is a thing of the will. It is that conquest of self whereby we develop an unconquerable caring for other people. So then the first authenticating mark of the Christian leader is that he cares for others, no matter what they do to him. That is something of which any Christian leader quick to take offence and prone to bear grudges should constantly think.<p/>(ii) Second, there was to be loyalty. Loyalty is an unconquerable fidelity to Christ, no matter what it may cost. It is not difficult to be a good soldier when things are going well. But the really valuable soldier is he who can fight well when his body is weary and his stomach empty, when the situation seems hopeless and he is in the midst of a campaign the movements of which he cannot understand. The second authenticating mark of the Christian leader is a loyalty to Christ which defies circumstances.<p/>(iii) Third, there was to be purity. Purity is unconquerable allegiance to the standards of Christ. When Pliny was reporting back to Trajan about the Christians in Bithynia, where he was governor, he wrote: "They are accustomed to bind themselves by an oath to commit neither theft, nor robbery, nor adultery; never to break their word; never to deny a pledge that has been made when summoned to answer for it." The Christian pledge is to a life of purity. The Christian ought to have a standard of honour and honesty, of self-control and chastity, of discipline and consideration, far above the standards of the world. The simple fact is that the world will never have any use for Christianity, unless it can prove that it produces the best men and women. The third authenticating mark of the Christian leader is a life lived on the standards of Jesus Christ.<p/><b>THE DUTIES OF THE CHRISTIAN LEADER WITHIN THE CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:610 4:11-16'>1Ti 4:11-16</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Certain duties are laid upon Timothy, the young leader designate of the Church. He is to devote himself to the public reading of scripture, to exhortation and to teaching. Here we have the pattern of the Christian Church service.<p/>The very first description of a church service which we possess is in the works of Justin Martyr. About the year A.D. 170 he wrote a defence of Christianity to the Roman government, and in it (Justin Martyr: First Apology, 1: 67) he says: "On the day called the day of the Sun a gathering takes place of all who live in the towns or in the country in one place. The Memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the prophets are read as long as time permits. Then the reader stops, and the leader by word of mouth impresses and urges to the imitation of these good things. Then we all stand together and send forth prayers." So then in the pattern of any Christian service there should be four things.<p/>(i) There should be the reading and exposition of scripture. Men ultimately do not gather together to hear the opinions of a preacher; they gather together to hear the word of God. The Christian service is Bible-centred.<p/>(ii) There should be teaching. The Bible is a difficult book, and therefore it has to be explained. Christian doctrine is not easy to understand, but a man must be able to give a reason for the hope that is in him. There is little use in exhorting a man to be a Christian, if he does not know what being a Christian is. The Christian preacher has given many years of his life to gain the necessary equipment to explain the faith to others. He has been set free from the ordinary duties of life in order to think, to study and to pray that he may better expound the word of God. There can be no lasting Christian faith in any Church without a teaching ministry.<p/>(iii) There should be exhortation. The Christian message must always end in Christian action. Someone has said that every sermon should end with the challenge: "What about it, chum?" It is not enough to present the Christian message as something to be studied and understood; it has to be presented as something to be done. Christianity is truth, but it is truth in action.<p/>(iv) There should be prayer. The gathering meets in the presence of God; it thinks in the Spirit of God; it goes out in the strength of God. Neither the preaching nor the listening during the service, nor the consequent action in the world, is possible without the help of the Spirit of God.<p/>It would do us no harm sometimes to test our modern services against the pattern of the first services of the Christian Church.<p/><b>THE PERSONAL DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN LEADER</b> (<a href='B:610 4:11-16'>1Ti 4:11-16</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Here in this passage is set out in the most vivid way the personal duty of the Christian leader.<p/>(i) He must remember that he is a man set apart for a special task by the Church. The Christian leader does not make sense apart from the Church. His commission came from it; his work is within its fellowship; his duty is to build others into it. That is why the really important work of the Christian Church is never done by any itinerant evangelist but always by its settled ministry.<p/>(ii) He must remember the duty to think about these things. His great danger is intellectual sloth and the shut mind, neglecting, to study and allowing his thoughts to continue in well-worn grooves. The danger is that new truths, new methods and the attempt to restate the faith in contemporary terms may merely annoy him. The Christian leader must be a Christian thinker or he fails in his task; and to be a Christian thinker is to be an adventurous thinker so long as life lasts.<p/>(iii) He must remember the duty of concentration. The danger is that he may dissipate his energies on many things which are not central to the Christian faith. He is presented with the invitation to many duties and confronted with the claims of many spheres of service. There was a prophet who confronted Ahab with a kind of parable. He said that in a battle a man brought him a prisoner to guard, telling him that if the prisoner escaped his own life would be forfeit; but he allowed his attention to wander, and "as your servant was busy here and there he was gone" (<a href='B:110 20:35-43'>1Ki 20:35-43</a>). It is easy for the Christian leader to be busy here and there, and to let the central things go. Concentration is a prime duty of the Christian leader.<p/>(iv) He must remember the duty of progress. His progress must be evident to all men. It is all too true of most of us that the same things conquer us year in and year out; that as year succeeds year, we are no further on. The Christian leader pleads with others to become more like Christ. How can he do so with honesty unless he himself from day to day becomes more like the Master whose he is and whom he seeks to serve? When Kagawa decided to become a Christian, his first prayer was: "God, make me like Christ." The Christian leader's prayer must first be that he may grow more like Christ, for only thus will he be able to lead others to him. 


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 If you have occasion to reprimand an older man, do not do so sharply, but appeal to him as you would to a father. Treat the younger men like brothers; the older women as mothers; the younger women as sisters, in complete purity.<p/></i><p/>It is always difficult to reprimand anyone with graciousness; and to Timothy there would sometimes fall a duty that was doubly difficult--that of reprimanding a man older than himself. Chrysostom writes: "Rebuke is in its own nature offensive particularly when it is addressed to an old man; and when it proceeds from a young man too, there is a threefold show of forwardness. By the manner and mildness of it, therefore, he would soften it. For it is possible to reprove without offence, if one will only make a point of this; it requires great discretion, but it may be done."<p/>Rebuke is always a problem. We may so dislike the task of speaking a warning word that we may shirk it altogether. Many a person would have been saved from sorrow and shipwreck, if someone had only spoken a warning word in time. There can be no more poignant tragedy than to hear someone say: "I would never have come to this, if you had only spoken in time." It is always wrong to shirk the word that should be spoken.<p/>We may reprimand a person in such a way that there is clearly nothing but anger in our voice and nothing but bitterness in our minds and hearts. A rebuke given solely in anger may produce fear; and may cause pain; but it will almost inevitably arouse resentment; and its ultimate effect may well be to confirm the mistaken person in the error of his ways. The rebuke of anger and the reprimand of contemptuous dislike are seldom effective, and far more likely to do harm than good.<p/>It was said of Florence Allshorn, the great missionary teacher, that, when she was Principal of a women's college, she always rebuked her students, when need arose, as it were with her arm around them. The rebuke which clearly comes from love is the only effective one. If we ever have cause to reprimand anyone, we must do so in such a way as to make it clear that we do this, not because we find a cruel pleasure in it, not because we wish to do it, but because we are under the compulsion of love and seek to help, not to hurt.<p/><b>THE RELATIONSHIPS OF LIFE</b> (<a href='B:610 5:1-2'>1Ti 5:1-2</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> These two verses lay down the spirit which the different age relationships should display.<p/>(i) To older people we must show affection and respect. An older man is to be treated like a father and an older woman like a mother. The ancient world knew well the deference and respect which were due to age. Cicero writes: "It is, then, the duty of a young man to show deference to his elders, and to attach himself to the best and most approved of them, so as to receive the benefit of their counsel and influence. For the inexperience of youth requires the practical wisdom of age to strengthen and direct it. And this time of life is above all to be protected against sensuality and trained to toil and endurance of both mind and body, so as to be strong for active duty in military and civil service. And even when they wish to relax their minds and give themselves up to enjoyment, they should beware of excesses and bear in mind the rules of modesty. And this will be easier, if the young are not unwilling to have their elders join them, even in their pleasures" (Cicero: De Officiis, 1: 34). Aristotle writes: "To all older persons too one should give honour appropriate to their age, by rising to receive them and finding seats for them and so on" (Aristotle: Nicomachean Ethics, 9: 2). It is one of the tragedies of life that youth is so often apt to find age a nuisance. A famous French phrase says with a sigh: "If youth but had the knowledge, if age but had the power." But when there is mutual respect and affection, then the wisdom and experience of age can cooperate with the strength and enthusiasm of youth, to the great profit of both.<p/>(ii) To our contemporaries we must show brotherliness. The younger men are to be treated like brothers. Aristotle has it: "To comrades and brothers one should allow freedom of speech and common use of all things" (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 9: 2). With our contemporaries there should be tolerance and sharing.<p/>(iii) To those of the opposite sex our relationships must always be marked with purity. The Arabs have a phrase for a man of chivalry; they call him "a brother of girls." There is a famous phrase which speaks of "Platonic friendship." Love must be kept for one; it is a fearful thing when physical things dominate the relationship between the sexes and a man cannot see a woman without thinking in terms of her body.<p/><b>CHURCH AND FAMILY DUTY</b> (<a href='B:610 5:3-8'>1Ti 5:3-8</a>)


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 Honour widows who are genuinely in a widow's destitute position. But if any widow has children or grandchildren, let such children learn to begin by discharging the duties of religion in their own homes; and let them learn to give a return for all that their parents have done for them; for this is the kind of conduct that meets with God's approval. Now she who is genuinely in the position of a widow, and who is left all alone, has set her hope on God, and night and day she devotes herself to petitions and prayers. But she who lives with voluptuous wantonness is dead even though she is still alive. Pass on these instructions that they may be irreproachable. If anyone fails to provide for his own people, and especially for the members of his own family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.<p/></i><p/>The Christian Church inherited a fine tradition of charity to those in need. No people has ever cared more for its needy and its aged than the Jews. Advice is now given for the care of widows. There may well have been two classes of women here. There were certainly widows who had become widows in the normal way by the death of their husbands. But it was not uncommon in the pagan world, in certain places, for a man to have more than one wife. When a man became a Christian, he could not go on being a polygamist, and therefore had to choose which wife he was going to live with. That meant that some wives had to be sent away and they were clearly in a very unfortunate position. It may be that such women as these were also reckoned as widows and given the support of the Church.<p/>Jewish law laid it down that at the time of his marriage a man ought to make provision for his wife, should she become a widow. The very first office-bearers whom the Christian Church appointed, had this duty of caring fairly for the widows (<a href='B:510 6:1'>Act 6:1</a>). Ignatius lays it down: "Let not widows be neglected. After the Lord be thou their guardian." The Apostolic Constitutions enjoin the bishop: "O bishop, be mindful of the needy, both reaching out thy helping hand and making provision for them as the steward of God, distributing the offerings seasonably to every one of them, to the widows, the orphans, the friendless, and those tried with affliction." The same book has an interesting and kindly instruction: "If anyone receives any service to carry to a widow or poor woman...let him give it the same day." As the proverb has it: "He gives twice who gives quickly," and the Church was concerned that those in poverty might not have to wait and want while one of its servants delayed.<p/>It is to be noted that the Church did not propose to assume responsibility for older people whose children were alive and well able to support them. The ancient world was very definite that it was the duty of children to support aged parents, and, as E. K. Simpson has well said: "A religious profession which falls below the standard of duty recognised by the world is a wretched fraud." The Church would never have agreed that its charity should become an excuse for children to evade their responsibility.<p/>It was Greek law from the time of Solon that sons and daughters were, not only morally, but also legally bound to support their parents. Anyone who refused that duty lost his civil rights. Aeschines, the Athenian orator, says in one of his speeches: "And whom did our law-giver (Solon) condemn to silence in the Assembly of the people? And where does he make this clear? 'Let there be,' he says, 'a scrutiny of public speakers, in case there be any speaker in the Assembly of the people who is a striker of his father or mother, or who neglects to maintain them or to give them a home'." Demosthenes says: "I regard the man who neglects his parents as unbelieving in and hateful to the gods, as well as to men." Philo, writing of the commandment to honour parents, says: "When old storks become unable to fly, they remain in their nests and are fed by their children, who go to endless exertions to provide their food because of their piety." To Philo it was clear that even the animal creation acknowledged its obligations to aged parents, and how much more must men? Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics lays it down: "It would be thought in the matter of food we should help our parents before all others, since we owe our nourishment to them, and it is more honourable to help in this respect the authors of our being, even before ourselves." As Aristotle saw it, a man must himself starve before he would see his parents starve. Plato in The Laws has the same conviction of the debt that is owed to parents: "Next comes the honour of loving parents, to whom, as is meet, we have to pay the first and greatest and oldest of debts, considering that all which a man has belongs to those who gave him birth and brought him up, and that he must do all that he can to minister to them; first, in his property; secondly, in his person; and thirdly, in his soul; paying the debts due to them for their care and travail which they bestowed upon him of old in the days of his infancy, and which he is now able to pay back to them, when they are old and in the extremity of their need."<p/>It is the same with the Greek poets. When Iphigenia is speaking to her father Agamemnon, in Euripides' Iphigenia at Aulis, she says (the translation is that of A. S. Way):<p/>"'Twas I first called thee father, thou me child.<p/>'Twas I first throned my body on thy knees,<p/>And gave thee sweet caresses and received.<p/>And this thy word was: 'Ah, my little maid,<p/>Blest shall I see thee in a husband's halls<p/>Living and blooming worthily of me?'<p/>And as I twined my fingers in thy beard,<p/>Whereto I now cling, thus I answered thee:<p/>'And what of thee? Shall I greet thy grey hairs,<p/>Father, with loving welcome in mine halls,<p/>Repaying all thy fostering toil for me?'"<p/>The child's joy was to look forward to the day when she could repay all that her father had done for her.<p/>When Euripides tells how Orestes discovered that an unkind fate had made him unwittingly slay his own father, he makes him say:<p/>"He fostered me a babe, and many a kiss<p/>Lavished upon me....<p/>O wretched heart and soul of mine!<p/>I have rendered foul return! What veil of gloom<p/>Can I take for my face? Before me spread<p/>What cloud, to shun the old man's searching eye?"<p/>To Euripides the most haunting sin on earth was failure in duty to a parent.<p/>The New Testament ethical writers were certain that support of parents was an essential part of Christian duty. It is a thing to be remembered. We live in a time when even the most sacred duties are pushed on to the state and when we expect, in so many cases, public charity to do what private piety ought to do. As the Pastorals see it, help given to a parent is two things. First, it is an honouring of the recipient. It is the only way in which a child can demonstrate the esteem within his heart. Second, it is an admission of the claims of love. It is repaying love received in time of need with love given in time of need; and only with love can love be repaid.<p/>There remains one thing left to say, and to leave it unsaid would be unfair. This very passage goes on to lay down certain of the qualities of the people whom the Church is called upon to support. What is true of the Church is true within the family. If a person is to be supported, that person must be supportable. If a parent is taken into a home and then by inconsiderate conduct causes nothing but trouble, another situation arises. There is a double duty here; the duty of the child to support the parent and the duty of the parent to be such that that support is possible within the structure of the home.<p/><b>AN HONOURED AND A USEFUL OLD AGE</b> (<a href='B:610 5:9-10'>1Ti 5:9-10</a>)


text:
 Let a woman be enrolled as a widow only if she is more than sixty years of age; if she has been the wife of one husband; if she has earned an attested reputation for good works; if she has nourished children; if she has been hospitable to strangers; if she has helped those in trouble; if she has washed the feet of the saints; if she has devoted herself to every good work.<p/></i><p/>From this passage it is clear that the Church had an official register of widows; and it seems that the word widow is being used in a double sense. Women who were aged and whose husbands had died and whose lives were lovely and useful were the responsibility of the Church; but it is also true that, perhaps as early as this, and certainly later in the early Church, there was an official order of widows, an order of elderly women who were set apart for special duties.<p/>In the regulations of the Apostolic Constitutions, which tell us what the life and organization of the Church were like in the third century, it is laid down: "Three widows shall be appointed, two to persevere in prayer for those who are in temptation, and for the reception of revelations, when such are necessary, but one to assist women who are visited with sickness; she must be ready for service, discreet, telling the elders what is necessary, not avaricious, not given to much love of wine, so that she may be sober and able to perform the night services, and other loving duties."<p/>Such widows were not ordained as the elders and the bishops were; they were set apart by prayer for the work which they had to do. They were not to be set apart until they were over sixty years of age. That was an age which the ancient world also considered to be specially suited for concentration on the spiritual life. Plato, in his plan for the ideal state, held that sixty was the right age for men and women to become priests and priestesses.<p/>The Pastoral Epistles are always intensely practical; and in this passage we find seven qualifications which the Church's widows must satisfy.<p/>They must have been the wife of one husband. In an age when the marriage bond was lightly regarded and almost universally dishonoured, they must be examples of purity and fidelity.<p/>They must have earned an attested reputation for good works. The office-bearers of the Church, male or female, have within their keeping, not only their personal reputation, but also the good name of the Church. Nothing discredits a church like unworthy office-bearers; and nothing is so good an advertisement for it as an office-bearer who has taken his Christianity into the activity of daily living.<p/>They must have nourished children. This may well mean more than one thing. It may mean that widows must have given proof of their Christian piety by bringing up their own families in the Christian way. But it can mean more than that. In an age when the marriage bond was very lax and men and women changed their partners with bewildering rapidity, children were regarded as a misfortune. This was the great age of child exposure. When a child was born, he was brought and laid before his father's feet. If the father stooped and lifted him, that meant that he acknowledged him and was prepared to accept responsibility for his upbringing. If the father turned and walked away, the child was quite literally thrown out, like an unwanted piece of rubbish. It often happened that such unwanted children were collected by unscrupulous people and, if girls, brought up to stock the public brothels, and, if boys, trained to be slaves or gladiators for the public games. It would be a Christian duty to rescue such children from death and worse than death, and to bring them up in a Christian home. So this may mean that widows must be women who had been prepared to give a home to abandoned children.<p/>They must have been hospitable to strangers. Inns in the ancient world were notoriously dirty, expensive and immoral. Those who opened their homes to the traveller, or the stranger in a strange place, or to young people whose work and study took them far from home, were doing a most valuable service to the community. The open door of the Christian home is always a precious thing.<p/>They must have washed the feet of the saints. That need not be taken literally, although the literal sense is included. To wash a person's feet was the task of a slave, the most menial of duties. This means that Christian widows must have been willing to accept the humblest tasks in the service of Christ and of his people. The Church needs its leaders who will live in prominence; but no less it needs those who are prepared to do the tasks which receive no prominence and little thanks.<p/>They must have helped those in trouble. In days of persecution it was no small thing to help Christians who were suffering for their faith. This was to identify oneself with them and to accept the risk of coming to a like punishment. The Christian must stand by those in trouble for their faith, even if, in so doing, he brings trouble on himself.<p/>They must have devoted themselves to all good works. Every man concentrates his life on something; the Christian concentrates his on obeying Christ and helping men.<p/>When we study these qualifications for those who were to be enrolled as widows, we see that they are the qualifications of every true Christian.<p/><b>THE PRIVILEGE AND THE DANGERS OF SERVICE</b> (<a href='B:610 5:9-10'>1Ti 5:9-10</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> As we have already said, if not as early as the time of the Pastoral Epistles, certainly in later days, the widows became an accepted order in the Christian Church. Their place and work are dealt with in the first eight chapters of the third book of The Apostolic Constitutions, and these chapters reveal the use that such an order could be and the dangers into which it almost inevitably ran.<p/>(i) It is laid down that women who would serve the Church must be women of discretion. Particularly they must be discreet in speech: "Let every widow be meek, quiet, gentle, sincere, free from anger, not talkative, not clamorous, not hasty of speech, not given to evil-speaking, not captious, not double-tongued, not a busybody. If she see or hear anything that is not right, let her be as one that does not see, and as one that does not hear." Such Church officials must be very careful when they discuss the faith with outsiders: "For unbelievers when they hear the doctrine concerning Christ, not explained as it ought to be, but defectively, especially that concerning his Incarnation or his Passion, will rather reject it with scorn, and laugh at it as false, than praise God for it."<p/>There is nothing more dangerous than an official of the Church who talks about things which ought to be kept secret; and a Church office-bearer must be equipped to communicate the gospel in a way that will make men think more and not less of Christian truth.<p/>(ii) It is laid down that women who serve the Church must not be gadabouts: "Let the widow therefore own herself to be the 'altar of God,' and let her sit in her own house, and not enter into the houses of the unfaithful, under any pretence to receive anything; for the altar of God never runs about, but is fixed in one place. Let therefore the virgin and the widow be such as do not run about, or gad to the houses of those who are alien from the faith. For such as these are gadders and impudent." The restless gossip is ill-equipped to serve the Church.<p/>(iii) It is laid down that widows who accept the charity of the Church are not to be greedy. "There are some widows who esteem gain their business; and since they ask without shame, and receive without being satisfied, render other people more backward in giving.... Such a woman is thinking in her mind of where she can go to get, or that a certain woman who is her friend has forgotten her, and she has something to say to her.... She murmurs at the deaconess who distributed the charity, saying, 'Do you not see that I am in more distress and need of your charity? Why therefore have you preferred her before me?'" It is an ugly thing to seek to live off the Church rather than for the Church.<p/>(iv) It is laid down that such women must do all they can to help themselves: "Let her take wool and assist others rather than herself want from them." The charity of the Church does not exist to make people lazy and dependent.<p/>(v) Such women are not to be envious and jealous: "We hear that some widows are jealous, envious calumniators, and envious of the quiet of others.... It becomes them when one of their fellow-widows is clothed by anyone, or receives money, or meat, or drink, or shoes, at the refreshment of their sister, to thank God."<p/>There we have at one and the same time a picture of the faults of which the Church is all too full, and of the virtues which should be the marks of the true Christian life.<p/><b>THE PERILS OF IDLENESS</b> (<a href='B:610 5:11-16'>1Ti 5:11-16</a>)


text:
 Refuse to enrol the younger women as widows, for when they grow impatient with the restrictions of Christian widowhood, they wish to marry, and so deserve condemnation, because they have broken the pledge of their first faith; and, at the same time, they learn to be idle and to run from house to house. Yes, they can become more than idle; they can become gossips and busybodies, saying things which should not be repeated. It is my wish that the younger widows should marry, and bear children, and run a house and home, and give our opponents no chance of abuse. For, even as things are, some of them have turned aside from the way to follow Satan. If any believing person has widowed relations, let such a person help them, and let not the Church be burdened with the responsibility, so that it may care for those who are genuinely in the position of widows.<p/></i><p/>A passage like this reflects the situation in society in which the early Church found itself.<p/>It is not that younger widows are condemned for marrying again. What is condemned is this. A young husband dies; and the widow, in the first bitterness of sorrow and on the impulse of the moment, decides to remain a widow all her life and to dedicate her life to the Church; but later she changes her mind and remarries. That woman is regarded as having taken Christ as her bridegroom. So that by marrying again she is regarded as breaking her marriage vow to Christ. She would have been better never to have taken the vow.<p/>What complicated this matter very much was the social background of the times. It was next to impossible for a single or a widowed woman to earn her living honestly. There was practically no trade or profession open to her. The result was inevitable; she was almost driven to prostitution in order to live. The Christian woman, therefore, had either to marry or to dedicate her life completely to the service of the Church; there was no halfway house.<p/>In any event the perils of idleness remain the same in any age. There was the danger of becoming restless; because a woman had not enough to do, she might become one of those creatures who drift from house to house in an empty social round. It was almost inevitable that such a woman would become a gossip; because she had nothing important to talk about, she would tend to talk scandal, repeating tales from house to house, each time with a little more embroidery and a little more malice. Such a woman ran the risk of becoming a busybody; because she had nothing of her own to take up her attention, she would be very apt to be over-interested and over-interfering in the affairs of others.<p/>It was true then, as it is true now, that "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." The full life is always the safe life, and the empty life is always the life in peril.<p/>So the advice is that these younger women should marry and engage upon the greatest task of all, rearing a family and making a home. Here we have another example of one of the main thoughts of the Pastoral Epistles. They are always concerned with how the Christian appears to the outside world. Does he give opportunity to criticize the Church or reason to admire it? It is always true that "the greatest handicap the Church has is the unsatisfactory lives of professing Christians" and equally true that the greatest argument for Christianity is a genuinely Christian life.<p/><b>RULES FOR PRACTICAL ADMINISTRATION</b> (<a href='B:610 5:17-22'>1Ti 5:17-22</a>)


text:
 Let elders who discharge their duties well be judged worthy of double honour, especially those who toil in preaching and in teaching; for Scripture says: "You must not muzzle the ox when he is treading the corn, and, "The workman deserves his pay."<p/>Do not accept an accusation against an elder unless on the evidence of two or three witnesses.<p/>Rebuke those who persist in sin in the presence of all, so that the others may develop a healthy fear of sinning.<p/>I adjure you before God and Christ Jesus and the chosen angels that you keep these regulations impartially, and that you do nothing because of your own prejudices or predilection.<p/>Do not be too quick to lay your hands on any man, and do not share the sins of others. Keep yourself pure.<p/></i><p/>Here is a series of the most practical regulations for the life and administration of the Church.<p/>(i) Elders are to be properly honoured and properly paid. When threshing was done in the East, the sheaves of corn were laid on the threshing-floor; then oxen in pairs were driven repeatedly across them; or they were tethered to a post in the middle and made to march round and round on the grain; or a threshing sledge was harnessed to them and the sledge was drawn to and fro across the corn. In all cases the oxen were left unmuzzled and were free to eat as much of the grain as they wished, as a reward for the work they were doing. The actual law that the ox must not be muzzled is in <a href='B:50 25:4'>Deu 25:4</a>.<p/>The saying that the workman deserves his pay is a saying of Jesus (<a href='B:490 10:7'>Luk 10:7</a>). It is most likely a proverbial saying which he quoted. Any man who works deserves his support, and the harder he works, the more he deserves. Christianity has never had anything to do with the sentimental ethic which clamours for equal shares for all. A man's reward must always be proportioned to a man's toil.<p/>It is to be noted what kind of elders are to be specially honoured and rewarded. It is those who toil in preaching and teaching. The elder whose service consisted only in words and discussion and argument is not in question here. He whom the Church really honoured was the man who worked to edify and build it up by his preaching of the truth and his educating of the young and of the new converts in the Christian way.<p/>(ii) It was Jewish law that no man should be condemned on the evidence of a single witness: "A single witness shall not prevail against a man for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offence that he has committed, only on the evidence of two witnesses, or of three witnesses, shall a charge be sustained" (<a href='B:50 19:15'>Deu 19:15</a>). The Mishnah, the codified Rabbinic law, in describing the process of trial says: "The second witness was likewise brought in and examined. If the testimony of the two was found to agree, the case for the defence was opened." If a charge was supported by the evidence of only one witness, it was held that there was no case to answer.<p/>In later times Church regulations laid it down that the two witnesses must be Christian, for it would have been easy for a malicious heathen to fabricate a false charge against a Christian elder in order to discredit him, and through him to discredit the Church. In the early days, the Church authorities did not hesitate to apply discipline, and Theodore of Mopseuestia, one of the early fathers, points out how necessary this regulation was, because the elders were always liable to be disliked and were specially open to malicious attack "due to the retaliation by some who had been rebuked by them for sin." A man who had been disciplined might well seek to get his own back by maliciously charging an elder with some irregularity or some sin.<p/>This permanent fact remains, that this would be a happier world and the Church, too, would be happier, if people would realize that it is nothing less than sin to spread stories of whose truth they are not sure. Irresponsible, slanderous and malicious talk does infinite damage and causes infinite heartbreak, and such talk will not go unpunished by God.<p/><b>RULES FOR PRACTICAL ADMINISTRATION</b> (<a href='B:610 5:17-22'>1Ti 5:17-22</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (iii) Those who persist in sin are to be publicly rebuked. That public rebuke had a double value. It sobered the sinner into a consideration of his ways; and it made others have a care that they did not involve themselves in a like humiliation. The threat of publicity is no bad thing, if it keeps a man in the right way, even from fear. A wise leader will know the time to keep things quiet and the time for public rebuke. But whatever happens, the Church must never give the impression that it is condoning sin.<p/>(iv) Timothy is urged to administer his office without favouritism or prejudice. B. S. Easton writes: "The well-being of every community depends on impartial discipline." Nothing does more harm than when some people are treated as if they could do no wrong and others as if they could do no right. Justice is a universal virtue and the Church must surely never fall below the impartial standards which even the world demands.<p/>(v) Timothy is warned not to be too hasty "in laying hands on any man." That may mean one of two things.<p/>(a) It may mean that he is not to be too quick in laying hands on any man to ordain him to office in the Church. Before a man gains promotion in business, or in teaching, or in the army or the navy or the air force, he must give proof that he deserves it. No man should ever start at the top. This is doubly important in the Church; for a man who is raised to high office and then fails in it, brings dishonour, not only on himself, but also on the Church. In a critical world the Church cannot be too careful in regard to the kind of men whom it chooses as its leaders.<p/>(b) In the early Church it was the custom to lay hands on a penitent sinner who had given proof of his repentance and had returned to the fold of the Church. It is laid down: "As each sinner repents, and shows the fruits of repentance, lay hands on him, while all pray for him." Eusebius tells us that it was the ancient custom that repentant sinners should be received back with the laying on of hands and with prayer. If that be the meaning here, it will be a warning to Timothy not to be too quick to receive back the man who has brought disgrace on the Church; to wait until he has shown that his penitence is genuine, and that he is truly determined to mould his life to fit his penitent professions. That is not for a moment to say that such a man is to be held at arms' length and treated with suspicion; he has to be treated with all sympathy and with all help and guidance in his period of probation. But it is to say that membership of the Church is never to be treated lightly, and that a man must show his penitence for the past and his determination for the future, before he is received, not into the fellowship of the Church, but into its membership. The fellowship of the Church exists to help such people redeem themselves, but its membership is for those who have truly pledged their lives to Christ.<p/><b>ADVICE FOR TIMOTHY</b> (<a href='B:610 5:23'>1Ti 5:23</a>)<p/><i> 5:23 Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine for the sake of your stomach, to help your frequent illnesses.<p/></i><p/>This sentence shows the real intimacy of these letters. Amidst the affairs of the Church and the problems of administration, Paul finds time to slip in a little bit of loving advice to Timothy about his health.<p/>There had always been a strain of asceticism in Jewish religion. When a man took the Nazirite vow (<a href='B:40 6:1-21'>Num 6:1-21</a>) he was pledged never to taste any of the product of the vine: "He shall separate himself from wine and strong drink; he shall drink no vinegar made from wine, or strong drink, and shall not drink any juice of grapes or eat grapes, fresh or dried. All the days of his separation he shall eat nothing that is produced by the grapevine, not even the seeds or the skins" (<a href='B:40 6:3-4'>Num 6:3-4</a>). The Rechabites also were pledged to abstain from wine. The Book of Jeremiah tells how Jeremiah went and set before the Rechabites wine and cups: "But they answered, We will drink no wine; for Jonadab, the son of Rechab our father, commanded us, You shall not drink wine, neither you nor your sons for ever; you shall not build a house; you shall not sow seed; you shall not plant or have a vineyard" (<a href='B:300 35:5-7'>Jer 35:5-7</a>). Now Timothy was on one side a Jew--his mother was a Jewess (<a href='B:510 16:1'>Act 16:1</a>) --and it may well be that from his mother he had inherited this ascetic way of living. On his father's side he was a Greek. We have already seen that at the back of the Pastorals there is the heresy of gnosticism which saw all matter as evil and often issued in asceticism; and it may well be that Timothy was unconsciously influenced by this Greek asceticism as well.<p/>Here we have a great truth which the Christian forgets at his peril, that we dare not neglect the body, for often spiritual dullness and aridity come from the simple fact that the body is tired and neglected. No machine will run well unless it is cared for; and neither will the body. We cannot do Christ's work well unless we are physically fit to do it. There is no virtue--rather the reverse--in neglect of or contempt for the body. Mens sana in corpore sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body, was the old Roman ideal, and it is the Christian ideal too.<p/>This is a text which has much troubled those who are advocates of total abstinence. It must be remembered that it does not give any man a licence to indulge in drink to excess; it simply approves the use of wine where it may be medicinally helpful. If it does lay down any principle at all, E. F. Brown has well stated it: "It shows that while total abstinence may be recommended as a wise counsel, it is never to be enforced as a religious obligation." Paul is simply saying that there is no virtue in an asceticism which does the body more harm than good.<p/><b>THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF ULTIMATE CONCEALMENT</b> (<a href='B:610 5:24-25'>1Ti 5:24-25</a>)


