The authorship of the so-called “pastoral epistles” (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) is more questionable than any other letters in the so-called Pauline letters, so a brief examination of the arguments pro and con seems in order. They all have essentially the same arguments, so I will address them all together.

Most textual critics find that the external evidence for Pauline authorship of the pastoral epistles is as good as for any other Pauline letter except Romans and 1 Corinthians. Irenaeus first cited them as Pauline, though other early patristic writers also seem to quote them. They are missing from Marcion’s so-called canon, but it may be noted that some material in 1 Timothy is antithetical to Marcionism, which was an early Christian heresy. The oldest manuscript of the Pauline collection, dated about 200 AD is missing the pastorals, but by the end of the second century the pastoral epistles were firmed fixed in every Christian canon in every part of the empire and were never doubted by anyone until the 19^th century, when a group of liberal scholars began to doubt the entire New Testament without a lot of evidence for their skepticism.

The internal evidence is more troublesome. Historically, these letters do not fit anywhere in Acts, which could be explained by having been written after Acts, if Acts were a court brief for Paul’s first trial before Caesar. There is good evidence that Paul was released from his first Roman imprisonment. Pseudepigraphers (those attempting to forge a letter in the name of one of the apostles, usually a few decades after their death) were usually careful not to include details that living witnesses might be able refute – like the Ephesian church nearly succumbing to heresy, Paul’s evangelism of Crete or a release and rearrest by Roman authorities. Theologically, scholars recognize a great number of Pauline doctrine in the epistles, but some scholars have noted uncharacteristic ways of thinking and speaking from Paul’s earlier letters. They particularly object to a degree of creedalism, particularly dealing with salvation. It might be noted these three letters (with the exception of Philemon) are Paul’s only personal letters. All the others were written to churches, to be read aloud as authoritative communications from Paul. Therefore, it was necessary in those letters for him to reiterate the truth of the gospel. The pastorals, however, were written to men who knew fully the content of the gospel. There was no need to restate it. The emphasis on church organization found in the pastorals seems to be the greatest difficulty for many scholars. They see this as a later need, not something that would have been addressed in the middle of the 1^st century. My question would be – why not? God obviously knew that Paul would die someday. Why wouldn’t God want His church, bereft of apostolic leadership, to have good organization and a means to pass on a body of doctrine? Linguistic and stylistic objections may well be due to the use of an amanuensis. Paul used such scribes before, but particularly in the writing of 2 Timothy, when he was in prison and apparently with much less freedom than during the first Roman imprisonment, Paul might have dictated to Luke, who alone remained with him, the meat of the epistle to write down at a different location.

For me, the “proof” is in the writer using the term “chief of sinners” to describe himself. Paul had used this term before, but forgers of later Christian almost always avoided anything that didn’t put the apostles on a pedestal. Only Paul would feel so free to address himself in this self-deprecating way.

The date of Titus and the letters to Timothy must be sometime after Paul’s release from his first Roman imprisonment (c. 61 AD). Some time must be allowed for his return to Asia Minor, evangelizing Crete with Titus and perhaps a winter in Nicopolis (Titus 3:12). Since, Paul died in the summer of 64, Titus should probably be dated no earlier than AD 63, perhaps shortly before Paul’s re-arrest.

It would seem that when Paul was released from his first Roman imprisonment, he took Titus (and perhaps Timothy) with him to Crete to evangelize the island. He left Titus on Crete (1:5) and went to Ephesus, where he left Timothy before heading to Macedonia. Sometime later, probably from Philippi (since he had not yet reached Nicopolis), he wrote to Titus.

The term, “pastoral,” is an 18th century designation that has stuck down through the years. Though not entirely accurate, large portions of these epistles do deal with church order and discipline, so they are “pastoral” in flavor. These epistles deal with church polity, policies, and practice, all of which concern the health of the church. However, the term pastoral is inaccurate in the sense that Timothy and Titus were not pastors in the present-day sense of the term.

These men were official representatives of the apostle Paul whom he dispatched to churches at Ephesus and Crete. Once there, they functioned in an official capacity to deal with special situations, meeting special needs. We see here the transition period between the time of the apostles and the time of the church as directed by elders and deacons. During this critical phase, Paul sent these men as his apostolic representatives to repel and deal with certain conditions and people who were threatening to hurt the work and ministries of these churches. Timothy and Titus undoubtedly possessed the gifts needed for pastoral ministry. While there was an element of pastoral care in what they did, they were not elders or pastors who are given by the Lord to various churches for long-term ministries (1 Peter 5:1). Paul sent them to assist churches in establishing their ministries pastorally-speaking (Titus 1:5).

These letters were primarily pastoral in nature, giving direction for the care, conduct, order, ministry and administration of assemblies of believers. Clearly these letters were designed by God to aid all Christians in our pastoral responsibilities and in the development and guidance needed for the ministry of local churches.

These were the last letters Paul would write. I think that’s significant because it shows Paul dealing with doctrine first, but not neglecting church organization. I would note that churches today tend to do it backward – to concentrate on church organization and worry about doctrine later, if at all. Organization and order are important for the spiritual organism that is the church. Each believer is a member with special functions to carry out. However, the primary need so essential to functioning as God has designed the church is right theology (teaching) and understanding of the Word, along with its personal application for Christ-like living. This provides us with the spiritual and moral foundation and motivation on which we base our methods, strategy, and administration. While our methods will often vary, they must never contradict the moral or spiritual principles of the Word of God which are in accord with godliness (Titus. 1:1). The organic and unified growth of a church (organization) must be based on right teaching based on God’s objective truth, which depends on the selection and function of people qualified and spiritually right with God. When we try to run an organization based on tradition or background, we end up with an organization that is not Biblical, and which will lack the spiritual fervor and capacity to function as God intends.

These letters deal with matters of church order not hitherto addressed. Before God gave the church specific directions for church organization, He gave us Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians. Organization is important but it is not primary Sound teaching and spirituality are what ultimately produce ministries that are effective according to God’s standards and that manifest the spirit and character of Christ in ministry and outreach.

God is always consistent in the things He asks us to do, though sometimes our finite human brains have difficulty wrapping themselves around His “big picture” perspective. 1 Timothy spent a good deal of time instructing Timothy and the church at Ephesus to learn and know the Scripture. Being consistent, God would never instruct us to know the Scripture to be spiritually informed if it were not a vital need in every human being. Yet, often I run across people who can’t see the benefits of knowing God’s truth.

Biblical knowledge gives direction to the Christian life. Scripture warns repeatedly that apart from God’s truth, man simply cannot now how to direct our lives. The prophet Jeremiah said “I know, O Lord, that a man’s way is not in himself; Nor is it in a man who walks to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).

Biblical knowledge gives substance to our faith. Faith by itself is useless unless one’s faith is centered on the right object. If you don’t know the truth, what are you relying on? Emotion? Feelings? Someone else’s opinion? A book? Tradition? An empty humanistic hope?  The result of such reliance is a faith without substance.

Biblical knowledge gives stability under pressure. When we know that God has spoken through the inspiration of Scripture and we know that God has promised that we can rest in His grace, love, plan and work through our lives, we have a hope that transcends this life. Scripture gives us hope and hope gives us stability (Romans 5:1; 15:4)

Biblical knowledge gives us the ability to handle the Word accurately. Knowing the general themes of Scripture allows us to better hand the individual sections of Scripture intelligently and wisely. A working knowledge of doctrines, for example, gives us confidence in dealing with obscure passages of Scripture.

Biblical knowledge equips us to detect and confront error. The pastoral epistles (1&2 Timothy and Titus) emphasize “sound doctrine” because sound doctrine is necessary to detect and confront false teaching and teachers (1 Timothy 1:3). Nothing enables us to detect what is counterfeit like knowing what is true.

Biblical knowledge gives us confidence to daily walk with God. The apostle Paul wrote in Colossians 2:2 that it is through the knowledge of the truth as found in Christ that we experience “the full assurance which understanding gives” in our daily walk with the Savior. Assurance of secure salvation found in prayer through God’s guidance promises God’s provision of daily cleansing and protection from the power of sin. “I will walk at liberty, for I seek Your precepts” (Ps. 119:45).

Biblical knowledge filters out our fears and superstitions which siphon our inner energy and immobilize us. God’s truth becomes a screen in a sieve that sifts out the superstitions that so many people operate by on a daily basis (seeking direction through their horoscope, for example).

Knowledge alone, however, can be dangerous. We’ve all heard “proof text” debates that wrong quoted the Bible to win arguments. Biblical knowledge must be intelligent and accurate or its use is merely dogmatic human opinion. Biblical knowledge is not meant to be an end in itself. Sought for the wrong motives (to impress, to boost a sagging ego, or gain points with God), Biblical knowledge becomes imbalanced and not motivated by love or grace. This results in arrogance and an intolerant spirit that believes itself to be exclusive and “better than.” This often leads to the misuse of one’s liberty and a complete lack of love for others (Romans 14).  Biblical knowledge that remains completely theoretical is also dangerous because it is not mixed with discernment and cannot lead to wise and holy use of that knowledge (see Col. 1:9; 2 Tim.3:17).

Those involved in pastoral ministry need to ask themselves an important question. What is your final authority? Ultimately, on whom do you rely? When you seek reasons for conducting ministry, where to you go looking for the answers? What forms the foundations of our ministries? When churches stop and think about their programs and processes, or individuals seek to make personal decisions, there are all sorts of authorities we may rely upon. These sources of authorities can become crutches to lean on rather than aids to spiritual growth. Many of these crutches put men in authority before Scripture.

This was not what Paul taught. He didn’t tell Timothy to go seek the wise council of the Ephesian elders. He told Timothy to study Scripture and hold those elders to studying and obeying it themselves. I’m not saying the churches don’t have wise men and women who can help other Christians make decisions, but only insofar as they are applying Scripture, because ultimately that never changes and it is God speaking to us. When human beings speak, the content is subject to change over time. When God spoke, He had it written down in order that we might have it still as He originally intended. We must remember that and rely on Scripture far and above the wisdom of malleable human beings.

Paul exhorted Timothy to conduct his ministry without bias or prejudice and to not be too hasty in assigning leadership tasks. If you appoint someone to a task prematurely, this causes you to share in the wrongs that might be committed. A friend noted that missionaries today are often young people with little maturity sent off to do a difficult job in challenging circumstances. When they make mistakes we tend to think “well, where did they get that idea?” when in reality, we should perhaps have been slower to select them, spent more time in training and then accepted that if they don’t know something, it might be our fault rather than theirs.

Paul reminded Timothy that the “fruits” of a person’s deeds are not always immediately apparent (Matthew 12:24-30), so that we should be careful not to make premature judgments. The fruit of righteousness may not always be immediately evident; likewise, the fruit of sin may take some time to manifest itself. In time, however, the fruit of one’s deeds will generally become apparent

It would be very easy for a slave to think little of his master. Nevertheless, we are to honor those to whom honor is due (Romans 13:7); indeed, we are to honor all men (1 Peter 2:17). Slaves were to respect the position held by their masters and to submit to them. They were to consider them “deserving of full respect”. This begs the question - what about believing masters? Would it not be easy to despise a believing master, wondering how he could practice slavery and even possess slaves? Paul mad no exceptions. Believing masters were to be shown no less respect; rather, a believing slave should serve his believing master with even more diligence, because in doing so, he was honoring his master.

Once more, Paul turned to the false teachers that were his primary reason for writing this letter.

“If someone spreads false teachings and does not agree with sound words (that is, those of our Lord Jesus Christ) and with the teaching that accords with godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing, but has an unhealthy interest in controversies and verbal disputes. This gives rise to envy, dissension, slanders, evil suspicions, and constant bickering by people corrupted in their minds and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a way of making a profit.” 1 Timothy 6:3-5

Recapping his former arguments, Paul wrote that their teachings did not square with sound doctrine nor did they lead godly lives. They arrogantly thought themselves wise while truly understanding nothing. They preferred controversy which led to all kinds of conflict and strife. Worse, many of them had entered their field of “ministry” for the money.

Paul closed his letter to Timothy by focusing on a proper Christian perspective of prosperity. The false teachers believed that godliness was the means to making a profit. Paul differed from this twisted view of ministry and godliness. Yes, he wrote, godliness is “profitable” when prosperity is rightly understood. Godliness combined with contentment is very profitable, even if not in a monetary way. We didn’t bring material prosperity with us at our birth and we can’t take it with us when we die, so we should not be obsessed with it. We should be content when our daily needs are met (Philippians 4:10-13).

Paul was a spiritual father to Timothy. They had spent years together in ministry. Timothy was given a challenging assignment to act on Paul’s behalf, with Paul’s authority. He was to identify false teachers and silence them. He was undoubtedly experiencing resistance, perhaps open attack, from those who had departed from the gospel. A younger man, he may well have questioned whether he was up to the task. Paul’s letter was a word of encouragement from a dear and trusted friend and mentor. Paul’s confidence in Timothy must have warmed this young man’s heart. Paul’s written expression of love and confidence must also have bolstered Timothy’s standing in the church at Ephesus. If Paul was aware of the opposition Timothy faced, his words were probably right on target, probing to the heart of the issues Timothy was facing.

Timothy was assured of Paul’s love and affection and of his trust. The Ephesian church was assured of Paul’s commitment to its spiritual well-being. Paul had nurtured them and had taught them the truths they needed to know. Even in his absence Paul cared much for this church; sending his very finest and most trusted colleague proved it.

Although there are those who have great issue with Paul’s instructions regarding women in the church, I would note that he includes women in his instructions; he did not ignore them, as though they had no contribution to make in the church. Paul indicated that women play a key role in ministry, both as the wives of deacons and elders. The character of a man’s wife may make or break him as a church leader. Paul’s words imply that a leader’s wife plays a key role in her husband’s ministry.

Nearing the end of Paul’s ministry, with a wealth of experience to look back on, Paul provided instruction not just to his disciple, but to those of us in later generations of the church. We know how to organize our churches and the qualifications our leaders should possess because Paul made the effort to write it down. This is a wonderful letter that speaks through the ages to how we should conduct ourselves as the body of Christ.

I ran across this article on MSN and thought it was really pretty odd, because I’ve met few people who have actually met Sarah Palin who dislike her and that includes Alaskan political rivals. Even Frank Murkowski, according to a neighbor of his who is a friend of mine (Frank lives in Fairbanks), says Frank resents Sarah, but admits she’s a nice person and what the voters clearly wanted. So, why anyone would send “hate mail” to Sarah or to someone who looks her (what is up with that?????) is beyond me.  She’s not the devil; she’s just one half of a political candidacy. I don’t like Barack Obama because he is the antithesis of everything I believe in, but I don’t hate him enough to send hate mail or make a harassing phone call. I would, however, duct tape Joe Biden’s mouth shut if I had a chance, not because I hate him, just because I think it’s the only way to get the guy to stop talking. Imagine him at a cocktail party? Anyone want to lay bets on how long it would take the other guests to get falling off their seats drunk just so they wouldn’t have to listen to him anymore?

BANGOR, Maine - A television news anchor in Maine who looks a lot like Sarah Palin says she's been getting "hate mail and nasty phone calls."

Cindy Michaels from WVII-TV has long brown hair that she sometimes wears up in a style similar to Palin's, and she also wears glasses on occasion.

Michaels says some viewers recently began accusing her of trying to copy Palin's style or, worse, somehow trying to subliminally sway votes.

While smarting over accusations of bias, Michaels says she's generally flattered by the comparisons to Palin. Michaels describes her as a "beautiful woman."

As the title of this post suggests, I’m really seeking to address a charge that the Alaska State legislature (or as TH poster Taft put it, “everyone who has worked with Sarah Palin”) finds our current governor lazy. I’m going to start by saying that the legislators may very well be arguing incorrectly from their perspective of the truth.

Sounds like I’m talking around the subject?  I’m not.  Alaska is a BIG state. Juneau is hundreds of miles away from Anchorage, which is the largest city in the state. Although it galls Fairbanksans to no end, the fact of the matter is that Anchorage is fully 50 percent of the state population. Fairbanks is the next largest city and Juneau trails a distant third. If it weren’t for the six-month long legislative season, Juneau would be a ghost town most of the year. Juneau is located on Alaska’s Southeastern “Panhandle” and is accessible only by air or ferry; there’s no surface highway linking the Southeastern communities. The city is plagued by dense fog that makes air travel dangerous and unpredictable. Many times we’ve had managers go to Juneau to discuss funding of mental health and become stranded for days on end. I once drove 500 miles in one direction through Canada to pick up a manager who got tired of waiting for flight out and took the ferry back to the mainland (which part of Alaska is a 250-mile journey through a foreign country). Alaskans voted many years ago to move our capital from Juneau to a neutral location along the Railbelt, to a town just north of Wasilla called Willow, where it would be accessible to the majority of the population by road. The voters then got real world woke up by the price tag and refused to fund the move, but the initiative is still on the books and Sarah has said she believes it should happen, but gradually, without a lot of expense involved. Most of the principle offices of the Executive Branch long ago moved to Anchorage, which galls the rest of the state, but is more accessible than Juneau.

The Legislature continues to meet in Juneau and the symbolic governor’s office remains there. The legislative season was shortened by voter initiative this last year from 160 days to 90 days because one of our local legislators, Jay Ramras, noted that they spent the first two months of his first term in Juneau having birthday parties and passing non-binding resolutions for things having nothing to do with Alaska. He “outed” them and the voters agreed that they needed only 90 days to get the real work done. Almost everything got done during the 90 days; the unexpected energy crisis caused Sarah to call them into special session in Fairbanks. This is part of her ongoing commitment to making government more accessible to the people of the state.

As part of that, Sarah chose not to move to Juneau. She continues to live in Wasilla, which is within commuter driving distance of Anchorage and she maintains an office in Anchorage. This is where she spends most of her working time. She is not cut off from the Legislature. She spends a couple of days a month in the Juneau office and Alaska has all the modern conveniences – phones, emails, tele-conferencing. Most of the managers of state departments were already located in Anchorage, so it makes sense that the governor is there to oversee them. And, the governor is much more accessible to the people of the state in Anchorage.

This does make it a little difficult for legislators to go knock on her door and have a private conversation. For those used to manipulating the political process in this manner, that is a bit difficult. However, I asked Jay (who is a neighbor and a friend since high school as well as a local businessman) if he ever felt as though he couldn’t contact Sarah on an important issue.  He showed me his call logs. He has had regular contact with Sarah’s office in Anchorage throughout his tenure in the House and has found her much easier to access than Murkowski who maintained his primary office in Juneau. Jay says the difference is that Sarah understands that she was elected as a fiscal conservative to stop the wasteful spending by the Legislature, so talking to her is often, unless you’re also a fiscal conservative, frustrating.

Now, there are legislators who will argue otherwise. I’ve spoken to some of them. Jay notes that you need to look at their party affiliation and/or their history of spending. Really since Jack Coghill, AIP, was governor, there has been a lot of cronyism between the Governor’s Office and the legislature. Tony Knowles only deepened the relationship and Murkowski brought it to an all-time high. This is why we fired him! Instead of acting as a check on one another, the Governor and the Legislature were in cahoots to spend money as quickly as they brought it in.  We hired Sarah to stop that. She has done that and Jay maintains that one way that she maintains those boundaries is by having her primary office in Anchorage rather than Juneau. She’s still accessible, but she clearly is not the Legislature’s friend and that’s what we asked for when we elected her.

The fact is that Sarah is known by those who work with her (not the legislators who expect her to fill their funding fantasies) as a hard-worker. I’m told by a state employee who works in the same building (a friend from college) that Sarah missed only about 10 days of work during her pregnancy and took far less time off than Frank Murkowski did while in office. She worked while she was in labor with Trig and she returned to work three days after his birth. She’s been bringing the baby into the office. I know a woman who is the principle owner and managing partner of one of the largest construction firms in Fairbanks who did the same thing with two of her three pregnancies (one of them occurred in December, so she could afford to take a month off and did). Alaskans are very accepting of that sort of alternative behavior.

So, Taft, Alaskans don’t consider Sarah to be lazy. The proof is in the 80-90 percent approval rating. We hired her to work hard and to accomplish the task of putting our legislators on the fiscal diet they kept refusing to accept from the people. Alaskans are decidedly torn about McCain-Palin because few of us want to lose Sarah before the job here has been completed. We’re not sure if the lieutenant governor will do as good a job for Alaska. Most of us are going to vote for Sarah for VP anyway simply because we recognize McCain-Palin is the best choice for America, but we’re going to miss her and we hope we aren’t going regret our loss for the nation’s gain.

After dealing with the attributes of false teachers, Paul instructed Timothy specifically on how to deal with certain groups within the church. Remembering that there was no long history of “how we’ve always done it” or a vast body of fellow ministers for Timothy to draw support from, we should listen to Paul’s instructions for fresh insights in how to deal with leadership within our modern-day churches, because his advice was indeed fresh for its times and, as I fear we have wandered far from much of what Paul taught, it may very well be fresh and meaningful for us today.

Older men are to be treated with the respect and deference that they deserve. One should not speak to an older man sharply; for they are not wayward or foolish children, but men of experience. Younger men should be dealt with as though they were brothers. Older women should be treated with the same respect we would show our mother. Timothy, a young man himself, should relate to the younger women as if they were his sisters. The relationship should be one that avoids improper sexual connotations. Every relationship should demonstrate honor and respect.

It seems widows were a particular problem in Ephesus. Christians are called to take care of widows and orphans. But not all widows are the same. Paul distinguished between the various types. Younger widows could remarry, so they should not be supported by the church, creating a long-term and unnecessary burden on the finances. For a widow to be placed on the support list, she would need to vow to remain unmarried and work in ministry. A young widow might meet an eligible man and regret her vow, and forsake her vow. Also, Paul warned that idleness led to gossip and busy-bodiness. Consequently, younger widows should be encouraged to remarry.

Paul acknowledged that there were widows who had no apparent means of support. Likely, they had no family members to look after them. If a widow had other family, the family had a duty to care for her, thus relieving the church of an unnecessary burden. Thus, Paul set the standard for the widow’s list very high.  A widow must be at least 60 years old, the wife of one man without other means of support and she must have demonstrated valuable ministry to the church over time and be devoted to prayer. I don’t think Paul was suggesting the church should excuse itself from helping widows in a time of need, even though they don’t meet all the qualifications listed above. The qualifications he set down are for those few widows whom the church would support consistently. It should also be noted that our churches today face a very different challenge than did Ephesus of the 1^st Century. Women largely did not have careers back in those days. Unless their husband’s trade lent itself to a women’s touch, they were often destitute when their husbands died, unless they had children to take care of them. Modern women do not have such constraints today and I caution against churches trying to financially support women who are capable of being employed in the workforce.

Paul knew that a church restructuring might result in unfounded accusations against otherwise orthodox leaders. Paul required two or three witnesses for any accusation that was made against an elder. In reality, it is the same standard that the Scriptures apply to all accusations (Matthew 18:15-20). An elder should be entitled to the same assumption of innocence that any other individual must be granted. I would imagine that Paul’s guidelines, if applied, would greatly reduce the number of accusations against church members. Those elders who were found guilty needed to be rebuked publicly, since their ministry and their sin had a very public impact.

Although there are those who have great issue with Paul’s instructions regarding women in the church, I would note that he includes women in his instructions; he did not ignore them, as though they had no contribution to make in the church. Paul indicated that women play a key role in ministry, both as the wives of deacons and elders. The character of a man’s wife may make or break him as a church leader. Paul’s words imply that a leader’s wife plays a key role in her husband’s ministry. Widows too played a critical role in the early church, ministering and praying.

Nearing the end of Paul’s ministry, with a wealth of experience to look back on, Paul provided instruction not just to his disciple, but to those of us in later generations of the church. We know how to organize our churches and the qualifications our leaders should possess because Paul made the effort to write it down. This is a wonderful letter that speaks through the ages to how we should conduct ourselves as the body of Christ.

I would also note that some of what Paul taught here should be applicable to our political process, which may be why that segment of society who reject the Bible so often reject candidates of proven character and elect people of fine, but often meaningless rhetoric. The false teachers sounded good too, but they were not telling the truth. We do well to remember this.

Paul addressed the twin issues of leadership in the church and false teaching in the church. He then gave specific instructions to Timothy in how to deal with certain groups. Fact is one size does not fit all in church leadership. Different people have different needs and different leaders have different ways of approaching ministries. In giving Timothy these instructions, Paul gave advice to us who live in the 21^st Century. Often we argue that the things mentioned here are not “relevant” to our day and age, but I think when we approach this with an open mind, we will see that Christianity of the 21^st Century bears a lot of similarity to Christianity of the 1^st Century.

Paul divided the leadership pool of the Church of Ephesus into four distinct groups, divided by age and gender. I am not going to recommend we do the same with our churches, because quite a lot of what we see here is culturally derived, but these basic principles still apply to modern churches which might have a very different leadership structure than the one Paul described herein.

Older men are to be treated with the respect and deference that they deserve. There was a time in our American culture where older folks were not respected, but I hope we’ve matured beyond that point. Older folks have a lot to give our society, not the least of which is more life experience than those of us who are not as old. One should not speak to an older man sharply; they are not wayward or foolish children, but men of experience. Younger men should be dealt with as though they were brothers. Older women should be treated with the same respect we would show our mothers. Timothy, a younger man himself, should relate to the younger women as if they were his sisters. The relationship should be one that avoids improper sexual connotations. Every relationship should demonstrate honor and respect.

It seems widows were a particular problem in Ephesus. Christians are called to take care of widows and orphans. But not all widows are the same. Paul distinguished between the various types. Younger widows could remarry, so they should not be supported by the church, creating a long-term and unnecessary burden on the finances. For a widow to be placed on the support list, she would need to vow to remain unmarried and work in ministry. A young widow might meet an eligible man and regret and forsake her vow. Also, Paul warned that idleness led to gossip and busy-bodiness. Consequently, younger widows should be encouraged to remarry.

Paul acknowledged that there were widows who had no apparent means of support. Likely, they had no family members to look after them. If a widow had other family, the family had a duty to care for her, thus relieving the church of an unnecessary burden. Thus, Paul set the standard for the widow’s list very high.  A widow must be at least 60 years old, the wife of one man without other means of support, she must have demonstrated valuable ministry to the church over time and be devoted to prayer. I don’t think Paul was suggesting the church should excuse itself from helping widows in a time of need, even though they don’t meet all the qualifications listed above. The qualifications he set down are for those few widows whom the church would support consistently.

It should also be noted that our churches today face a very different challenge than did Ephesus of the 1^st Century. Women largely did not have careers back in those days. Unless their husband’s trade lent itself to a women’s touch, they were often destitute when their husbands died, unless they had children to take care of them. Modern women do not have such constraints today and I caution against churches trying to financially support women who are capable of being employed in the workforce. Churches should spend money on ministry, not on welfare for those who are capable of working and supporting ministry.

Leadership comes in many forms, some more flashy than others. In churches, we often seek leadership in ways that to me seem paradoxical. We want to see a tape of the pastoral candidate preaching. That’s fine, but being a good preacher doesn’t make one a good pastor. The two are not synonymous. Some of the healthiest churches I’ve seen had a teacher for a pastor who had a heart for ministry while one of the unhealthiest churches I’ve seen is dominated by an evangelist who makes your toes tingle when he preaches. The teacher works hard to create and encourage ministries that grow the church both spiritually and numerically, while the evangelist preaches an amazing sermon on Sunday and …. I make no claims on any particular churches. Some churches with great preaching ministries also have great small group ministries. What I am saying is that leadership is not meant to be about the guy in the pulpit, but the Savior inside the folks who lead within the church. If the focus of your church is on the guy in the pulpit, your gaze is off-kilter. What will happen when he moves on? Will you close the doors or spend a year looking for the next great thing in preaching? When the ministry is the focus on the church, the church goes on through pastoral changes because the church is not the pastor, but the people.

Paul knew that a church restructuring might result in unfounded accusations against otherwise orthodox leaders. Paul required two or three witnesses for any accusation that was made against an elder. In reality, it is the same standard that the Scriptures apply to all accusations (Matthew 18:15-20). An elder should be entitled to the same assumption of innocence that any other individual must be granted. I would imagine that Paul’s guidelines, if applied, would greatly reduce the number of accusations against church members. Those elders who were found guilty needed to be rebuked publicly, since their ministry and their sin had a very public impact. I would note that this has not always been the case with church leaders in many denominations. Often we find clear evidence of gross misconduct and try to sweep it under the rug. That is not a Biblical response to accusations against the clergy.

Churches must be absolutely clear about what they believe and what they will do to protect the gospel truth. When leaders depart from that truth, it should be acceptable within any church body for people to confront them. The church should not have to split or dissolve because the leadership is rotten. Everyday Christians should be able to correct such errors. Unfortunately, this is not the case in most churches today. Often the pastor owns the building or there is a group of protective sycophants around him who prevent such confrontations. Coming with two or three witnesses isn’t enough. Half the congregation wouldn’t be enough. And, this leads to scandals. It leads to the contents of hate-sermons being published on the web. It leads to the formerly abused going to the courts to ask for relief. The church, who are the people sitting in the pews, not the pastor and his staff, should be able to confront issues of immorality in leadership, false teaching and other problems without destroying the church. That requires a change in the basic attitudes we have. We are not seeking to be mean when we confront. We are seeking to correct and eventually to reconcile. The goal is to bring someone back to God in the fullness of that word.  Not confronting is not pleasant and polite. It is a trick of Satan to entangle us in a web of avoidance from which we may never break free. An accusation must be taken seriously, but it must also be held with a grain of salt until clear evidence is found to establish guilt. Even then, the goal should always be to bring the false teacher or immoral leader back to God while at the same time protecting the church from their depredations.

False teachers get into leadership roles because we let them. They stay in leadership roles because we’re afraid to confront unpleasantries. True Christian living requires courage, sometimes the courage to confront our very leadership to point them back to the Biblical path.

“So I want the men to pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without anger or dispute.

“Likewise the women are to dress in suitable apparel, with modesty and self-control. Their adornment must not be with braided hair and gold or pearls or expensive clothing, but with good deeds, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. A woman must learn quietly with all submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or have authority over a man. She must remain quiet. For Adam was formed first and then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman, because she was fully deceived, fell into transgression. But she will be delivered through childbearing, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with self-control (1 Timothy 2:8-15, emphasis mine).

I would like readers to note that word “likewise” for it connects the earlier part of the chapter with the later part. All saints are to submit to those in authority over them and seek to lead peaceful and quiet lives indicative of godliness and dignity. Why does Paul focus on women at that point? Scholars believe the women in the Ephesian church had usurped the authority of their husbands. Paul focused on appearance here, as in 1 Corinthians 11:1-16, because a wife’s submission to her husband was evident in her appearance in those days, specifically by the covering of her head in public worship. Wives are to strive to give glory and preeminence to their husbands as their spiritual heads and not attract undo attention to themselves. We all know women who overshadow their men, even in Christian circles. Paul was not, I think, calling for absolute silence from women in the church meeting. There were a number of women involved in Paul’s ministry throughout the years and they do not seem to have been silent. What Paul forbade is speech that usurps the authority of the men and of male leadership in the church.

Obviously, I do not subscribe to women having nothing to say in the discussion of church polity or doctrine. I do not belong to a church that expects women to sit silently and accept whatever men decide. For one thing, given the number of construction workers and military men in our church, not a whole lot would get done if the men were the only ones allowed to make decisions. I was raised as a Christian in the idea that women have equal say in the church. However, women should not assume authority that is greater than the men in the church and they should not seek to overshadow their husbands within the congregation. This general guiding principle will likely vary in practice among churches and within marriages. Clearly, the Proverbs 37 woman was no doormat, but a vital part of her marriage, community and the family business. We would do well to remember her.

Today is the running of the Equinox Marathon, a uniquely Alaskan tradition. It is considered by many marathon runners to be the second hardest marathon in the United States – Pikes Peak being the hardest. Those who have run it some years will maintain it is much harder than Pikes Peak because, though similar in the elevation gained, depending on the year, the Equinox is run in hypothermic conditions. You see, traditionally the race is run on the closest Saturday to the fall equinox – that would be September 20 this year. Most years, it is like it is today – rainy, with leaves coming off the trees in vast floats, very cool in the morning while you’re slogging up Ester Dome, but warming later as you’re pounding down the back of the Dome. Occasionally, the weather will be hot and sunny and runners will shed their thermals for their support teams to retrieve. Other years, it’s snowing at race start and the thousand foot climb from the University to the top of Ester Dome is slippery, cold and – did I mention – cold.

I’ve participated in the Equinox three times myself. I don’t say I ran it. I am most definitely in the hiker class. I leave the winning of the race to runners; as a runner, I’m really much more of a swimmer. The first time, I was a teenager in high school and was challenged by a group of friends to do the race. We didn’t train for it; I don’t think we were even sure of the route. We finished; we weren’t last, but we weren’t far ahead of the red lantern winners.  The second time, I was in college and a friend was actually running the Equinox. Since we college students didn’t have a lot of resources, the hikers among us hiked ahead during the night to wait for Mark to come by and provide him support both emotional and logistical. It was snowing that morning as I set out and the top of the Dome, where I was to be stationed, was covered in white when I got there.  I had been selected for that position based on the idea that I was from Alaska and could handle it.  I have never been so happy to see someone in my life as I was when Mark showed up. I was also fully able to cheer for his being somewhere between 10^th and 20^th at that point because it meant I could run with him for a while and warm up.  I ended up jogging all the way down the back of the Dome, though Mark left me in his slush not soon after I joined him. He finished near the bottom of the top 10. He was a marathon runner in the Lower 48 and he told us this was the toughest marathon, including Pikes Peak, he’d ever run.  The third time, I walked-ran it as an adult with a group of female friends who figured they wanted someone who had actually done the race before.  They found out, like I had found out a long time before, that 26 miles is a long way to glory and there’s usually only your friends still at the finish line when you get there after hours of walk-running in the rain. Since I am actually a year older than the Equinox, unless my teenage daughter challenges me some day soon, I probably won’t do the Equinox again. Not that I couldn’t still hike it (10 miles in a day is routine for an Alaskan hiker, 26 is merely a challenge), but there’s the recognition that at some point, hiking should be fun and the Equinox is more of a fine and pleasant misery.

The finishing times, even for the front-runners of the Equinox, are not spectacular. The Boston and New York Marathons have much more exciting numbers. But remember that they are run on more or less flat pavement on warm summer days. The Equinox is uniquely Alaskan because we don’t let the weather stop us. We get up before the sun and we climb a nearly 1000-foot mountain on a lonely country road (though there are usually plenty of cars on it that day) and then we pound down the back of that same dome. You see all sorts, from serious runners in their layered poly-pro to people with their infants in backpacks and septuagenarians with diamond willow walking sticks wearing hiking boots. This year there should be about 1000 participants, 300 in the running category, 500 in the hiking category, and 200 who aren’t even on the books because they are there to test themselves, not pay a $50 entrance fee and get their names in the official records.

I post this because this is the sort of free-for-all lifestyle that is Alaska. It is the world that Sarah Palin comes from. It is a world where people accept challenges just because they’re there, not because they have the special talent to win that challenge or even because somebody else might notice, but because participation in and of itself is considered a win.

Paul’s introduction in the first two verses may have been meant as much for the Ephesians as it was for Timothy. Perhaps Paul knew that the Ephesians would be reading this letter over Timothy’s shoulder or assumed that Timothy would read it to the congregation. That these personal letters were preserved by their recipients and then by the churches in which they served, copied and distributed throughout the Christian regions, it seems likely that this was becoming an established pattern with Paul’s writings. He wrote the letter expecting that it would be read by more people than Timothy.

The clues for this are obvious. Certainly Timothy did not need to be reminded of Paul’s apostleship. He had traveled extensively with Paul. The mention of Paul’s apostleship was not for Timothy, but for the wider audience of the Ephesians, who needed to be reminded of Paul’s authority in this situation. As part of expressing that authority, Paul made a point of addressing Timothy in a way that conveyed his confidence in Timothy. He clearly wrote so that the Ephesians would recognize that when Timothy spoke or took action, he did so with Paul’s authorization and authority.

Timothy needed Paul’s seal of authority for the task before him. Timothy was dealing with false teachers in heresy and false teachers do not merely read “between the lines;” they read “outside the lines”, which Paul had noted in 1 Corinthians 4:6 (they “went beyond what is written.”) Paul identified their teaching as based upon “myths and interminable genealogies” (1 Timothy 1:3-4). Ostensibly these teachers were using the Old Testament law as their text, but the end result of this teaching was empty speculation which did not promote God’s redemptive plan as found in the gospel. These teachers spoke with great confidence and with an air of authority, but in reality they didn’t understand what they were talking about.

Paul contrasted this false teaching with the authentic instruction of the apostles. The goal of apostolic, Biblical teaching is love motivated by a pure heart, a good conscience and a sincere faith. These false teachers claimed to teach that which the Old Testament law did not make clear, but which they had somehow come to understand. While others remained “unenlightened”, they interpreted and applied the Old Testament law to make themselves look good. Paul countered that the law indeed is good (Romans 7:12, 14), but it was not given to make men feel righteous, but to condemn all mankind of sin. Paul gave his own personal testimony to demonstrate the truth that the gospel declares that men are not saved by law-keeping or good works, as the false teachers maintain, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

Paul urged Timothy, as his authorized representative, to act according to his instructions, encouraged by the prophesies that had accompanied his calling. He must, like his spiritual father, “contend earnestly for the faith” and “fight the good fight”. Unlike the false teachers, he must “hold firmly to the faith” and to a “good conscience.”

This required that Timothy know himself pretty well. He must not become distracted by the shiny new teachings of these false prophets. He must know what was correct doctrine and stand by it resolutely.

In 1Timothy, we are seeing the passing of the torch of truth from one generation to another. Paul expressed confidence in Timothy to conclude the task he’d been given. Those issues that were most important for Timothy to keep in mind were reviewed. In doing this review for Timothy, Paul also reviewed doctrinal issues for the Ephesians whom he knew would be reading this letter. And, ultimately, those instructions come down to us.

Don’t be like ravens, easily distracted by shiny objects. The Bible holds the words of God. Maybe it isn’t as exciting to read a book as it is to hear a stirring sermon, but it is far more necessary. Stirring sermons are the shiny objects of the theological/rhetorical world – exciting, entertaining, and ultimately ephemeral. The Bible is eternal, solid, never changing. Timothy had helped write many of the books of the New Testament as Paul’s assistant. Now, another book of the Bible came to him with vital instructions for the next-generation church. We should know what it says and embrace it as our legacy.

1Timothy was probably written after Paul’s release from his first Roman imprisonment and shortly before his re-arrest and final imprisonment, right around AD 63. Timothy was Paul’s longtime companion, having joined him on his second missionary journey and traveled with him through his first imprisonment. When Paul was released from Roman prison the first time, he took Timothy and Titus with him back to Asia Minor, and then left Titus on Crete.  Paul and Timothy then went by way of Ephesus en route to Macedonia.

A native of Lystra, Timothy’s mother was a Jew and his father a Gentile. During his childhood, Eunice and his grandmother Lois taught him the Scriptures. Timothy was probably converted by Paul on Paul’s first missionary journey since Paul referred to Timothy as his child in the faith. By the time of Paul’s second missionary journey, Timothy was a well-respected disciple in the area around Lystra and nearby Derbe. Paul asked Timothy to accompany his group. Since Timothy had never been circumcised (probably because his father was a Greek), Paul had Timothy circumcised to make him more acceptable to the Jews.

In addition to accompanying Paul on most of his second missionary journey, Timothy was also sent on several crucial missions by Paul  (Acts 17:14-15; 18:5; 19:22; 20:4; Rom. 16:21; 1 Cor. 16:10; 2 Cor. 1:19; 1 Thess. 3:2,6). For example, when Paul was unable to go to Corinth, he sent Timothy to represent Paul and his teachings (1 Cor. 4:17). Later when Paul was in prison, he sent Timothy to Philippi (Phil. 2:19). Paul felt that no one had any more compassion and commitment than Timothy (Phil. 2:20-22).  Paul and Timothy were so close that both names are listed as the authors of six of Paul’s letters (2 Cor. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:1; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1; Philem. 1).

In Ephesus, they encountered false teachers who had virtually taken over the church (Paul had predicted this in Acts 20). Paul excommunicated two of them – Hymenaeus and Alexander. Paul apparently had pressing business in Macedonia, but the church in Ephesus really needed guidance, so he left Timothy in charge, giving him instructions to deal with the heretics who had become leaders in the church.

The purpose of this letter is closely tied to the purpose of Timothy’s sojourn in Ephesus. He was there to combat heresy. False teachers had wreaked havoc on the church in many areas, destroying the atmosphere of public worship and stealing from the church coffers. They had especially influenced some of the women in the church—in particular the unmarried and young widows, so that the church was in disarray and needed correction. It also needed new leadership.

Timothy needed to address three areas if the church at Ephesus was to be restored. The conduct of the church, particularly involving worship and leadership needed a major overhaul. The doctrinal controversies promoted by the false teachers created a judgmental and critical spirit within the congregation, causing the purpose of the Christian walk to be lost in the shuffle. Paul commanded the church to refocus on prayer for all people, especially those in authority.

Speaking of authority, Paul addressed hierarchical roles within the church. The “godless chatter” of these false teachers had caused some of the women, particularly the young widows, to become lazy gossips who were overruling the men in teaching. For this reason, Paul advised Timothy not to allow them to teach the men. Paul placed an emphasis on the ethical qualifications of overseers (a.k.a. bishops, elders) and deacons, with a special appeal for some of the men to desire the office of overseer. Remember that Paul had recently excommunicated two of the church’s leaders. The church had been rocked and needed new guides. The ethical guidelines Paul set forth make perfectly good sense within this context.

Timothy was charged with guarding “the truths of the faith” against apostasy. The apostates had crept into the church, just as the Spirit had predicted they would, embracing an amalgamation of Jewish legalism and Greek asceticism, forbidding both marriage and restricting diets. Timothy was to warn the church to stay away from them. To prove that legalism-asceticism is not the route to godliness, Paul urged Timothy to “train yourself to be godly” and to set forth the true gospel of Jesus Christ before the congregation, telling him to “Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them…” (4:16).

Timothy was still a fairly young man and needed to learn pastoral skills in addressing certain groups. His youth and relative inexperience as the leader in ministry would cause difficulties in dealing with various age and gender groups within the church. Likely the church was experiencing financial difficulty because of the greed of the false teachers, so Paul gave various instructions focused on financial distribution to various groups in the church. Timothy needed to place a priority on the widows, though certain qualifications had to be met: in particular, young, able-bodied women and those whose children could take care of them should not be helped out by the church.

Elders who had remained faithful to the gospel should receive a “double honor”, including financial remuneration. Those who had sinned (provided it was proved by at least two witnesses) earned a rebuke instead of “honor”. Prospective elders needed to be screened quite carefully because, most likely, many of them would be motivated by greed. Slaves are to serve their masters well (since, by implication, their needs would be met by their masters).

The epistle concludes with personal instructions to Timothy. He was to “pursue godliness … [and] fight the good fight of the faith”, a theme repeated throughout this epistle. Paul finished the letter by focusing on those who are wealthy and godly in the church. They should not mistake his warnings about the greed of the false teachers Wealth in itself is not evil; it is the love of money that is evil. Monetary wealth can be used for good deeds. The epistle closes with a reminder to Timothy to guard the gospel in the lives of the Ephesians.

Motivations are almost always mixed. Wait around for your motives to be pure and unselfish and you’ll probably grow roots. Still, it’s important to ask “what is my motivation” when it comes to faith commitments. In times of great struggle and need, people become intently conscious of their need for God, or at least some sort of spiritual help, to see them through. There’s great truth in that old chestnut “There’s no atheists in foxholes!” There’s nothing mistaken with that epiphany. It’s truth! It is also exceedingly easy to approach God as a means to an end. Christianity is about serving God, not about God serving you. The latter is a form of shamanism, trying to control God through your prayers and practices. It is using God rather than trusting God.

Honestly, nearly all of us start our journeys toward God wanting something from Him. We owe Him every heart beat just because of what He’s already done for us. He’s our Creator, our Redeemer. What person in their right mind wouldn’t want to surrender to Someone Who is all-powerful and has proved He will sacrifice anything for our good? But, that can’t be our motivation for coming to God, because He knows our hearts. At some point, we must transition from thinking “what’s in it for me?” to “what must I do to get Him?” You can believe in a caricature version of God with the first motivation, but you will meet the real God with the second.

Being a Christian is not merely being influenced by Christian teaching. It is switching your fundamental allegiance to Jesus. It’s an all-or-nothing choice forced upon us by the magnitude of Jesus’ claims. Jesus is Lord! He is not just a divine angelic being, but the “name above all names” (Philippians 2:9). In Him “all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). This does not allow us the option to respond to Him politely. If Jesus did what He said, then you have to throw away everything and follow Him. There’s no use saying you believe in Jesus unless you let that change your life and affect your view of everything. Redemption means nothing unless it has a purpose in our actual lives.

Maybe you still hold barriers between you and the Christian faith. I urge you not to put things on hold, waiting for your feelings to somehow change and the barriers to melt away. Take an inventory to discern your areas of reservation. Are there parts of the Christian message – creation, sin, Jesus as God, cross, resurrection – that you don’t understand or agree with? Do you still have doubts and objections to the Christian faith that you cannot resolve? Do you perceive that a move into full Christian faith will cost you something dear? Do you fear commitment?

Analyze and indentify your barriers, but don’t trust yourself to do this on your own. Almost every new skill is best learned in community with others who are at various stages in their own journey. Spend time in a Christian church, in worship and fellowship with its members. Take the time to talk with Christians and hear how they handled these same doubts themselves. Yeah, most of us have had them. Remember that becoming a Christian is not like doing a laundry list. It’s not about checking off the things you believe and do. It’s about a relationship, about coming to know Jesus, Who He is and what He did.

If you had a religious experience as a child, then departed from that path, you may be deeply confused about whether you’re returning to your faith or coming to it anew. No human being can tell you for sure the status of your heart. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If you want to connect or reconnect with God, you must do two things.

Repent. There’s no getting around that first step. Repentance begins a new relationship with God. It’s not about changing your behavior, although some of that may be required. Behavior is not what makes you a Christian. You can be socially and personally ethical and still not have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Repentance is not less than being sorry for individual sins. It is far more than being sorry. It is recognizing that your main sin is your self-salvation project. We all use both our good and bad deeds to make ourselves our own Lord and Savior. We create alternate “gods” in trying to prove ourselves by our moral goodness, achievement, family or career. Even church involvement may need to be repented of once we understand that it was all a way to manipulate God and others and put them in our debt.

Repentance means confessing things that you have placed ahead of God in your life. We repent not just of lying, cheating and fornicating, but of the motivations beneath our good works.

Clearing the air between ourselves and God, we now must believe in Christ. This means believing He was Who He said He was and acknowledging that we require salvation which He secured on the cross for us. This is not an intellectual belief, but a faith that changes lives and connects us to God through trust. It’s crossing that rope bridge when you can’t see the other side and you really doubt it will hold you. It’s not the strength of your faith that saves you, but the object of your faith. Strong faith in a faulty bridge will drop you in an icy river. Weak faith in a strong bridge will see you through to the other side. You don’t have to wait for all doubts and fears to dissolve in the pure light of reason or the hot passion of belief. Faith wouldn’t be faith if you were 100 percent certain of it and working on the quality of your commitment is just another way of putting another “god” between you and God. Faith begins as you recognize and reject your alternative trusts and “gods” and turn to the Father instead. It’s about asking for a relationship with Him based on what Jesus has done rather than on the basis of your moral achievements. This begins a lifetime process whereby the gospel shapes us more and more.

How does one become a Christian? Sometimes Christians make it sound like some sort of technique or ritual. Ask, seek, knock. Admit, believe, confess. I know from my own experience that God’s grace sought me out. It was like He drew aside the veil of normal reality that I thought was true and showed me something greater. Having seen that glimmer of true reality, I eventually had to stop denying its existence. I saw myself for who I really was – a sinner at the mercy of my sin. Ouch! Teenagers so often want to be in control of our lives; the realization that I was not in control, never had been and never would be was painful. It was no more and no less a recognition that I am not what I was meant to be and that I can never be what I was meant to be in my own strength. Only through God’s ministry in my life can I be completely fulfilled. There’s no technique, no ritualistic words that will grant faith. There is only the acceptance of God’s grace.

Faith is a mystery that you cannot create in yourself through a technique. We will never find God by seeking Him, but by giving Him permission to seek us. Not that He needs our permission to love us, but He’s polite enough to wait for us to allow a relationship.

I believe that Christianity makes the most sense of our individual life stories and the world’s history. The Christian understanding of where we came from, what’s wrong with us, and how it can be repaired has greater power to explain what we see and experience than does any other alternative account.

Christianity, alone among the world faiths, teaches that God is triune. God is one being Who exists eternally in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That concept overloads our mental circuitry because it bristles with profound, life-changing, world-changing implications.

If there is no God, everything that we are is the product of blind impersonal forces. Love may feel significant, but evolutionary naturalists tell us it’s just a biochemical state of mind. Sad, huh? But … what if there is a God? Does love fare better now? It would depend on Who you think God is. An unipersonal god could be sovereign and powerful, but how would such a god ever understand love. If God is triune, though, then loving relationships are a continuation of His very nature. The Triune God is relational from eternity forward. Christians believe that the world was made by a God Who is a community of Persons Who have loved each other for all eternity. Humans were made for mutual self-giving, other-directed love because that is the pattern of our Creator in Whose image we were made. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God created.

Jonathan Edwards, reflecting on the interior life of the triune God, concluded that God must be eternally happy. That makes sense from a Christian perspective. A community of Persons continually pouring joyful love into one another should be happy. Wouldn’t any of us rejoice at such a relationship with our spouses? That other-orientation at the heart of God’s being means that He is at nature seeking to glorify and love others. So why does He ask us to obey Him unconditionally, to glorify, praise and center our lives on Him? That doesn’t sound so other-oriented. Or does it? We learn new skills through practice. The only way we can have the same joy God experiences through the Tri-unity is if we center our entire lives around Him rather than ourselves. In doing so, we learn to center our love around others. We were not created to receive the infinite joy of mutual love and glorification, but to share it. By centering our lives on Him, serving Him not just out of self-interest, but just because He is Who He is, we share in the joy and love He inhabits. We were designed not just to believe in God in some general way, but to center our lives and passion upon Him.

This leads to a uniquely positive view of the material world. Many creation accounts describe the world as an illusion, the result of a battle among the gods, or as an accidental outcome of natural forces. The Christian worldview describes an event made in joy that is good in and of itself. The universe is understood as a dance of beings united by energies, like the tones of a chord or the living organisms on this earth.

The Bible started with the dance, with everything moving in perfect coordination. Then came the Fall. Adam and Eve were only given one rule – don’t eat of the fruit of that particular tree, one among thousands of really great fruit trees in Eden. What was so bad about eating of this tree? I don’t think there was anything actually bad about it. God set it there as a test, which He knew they would fail. That bothers some people, but a requirement to obey when there is no alternative to disobey really isn’t much of a choice, is it? God asked them to obey simply because they loved Him. And they failed.  They became self-centered and the human relationship with God unraveled, affecting all our other relationships. Self-centeredness inevitably leads to psychological alienation, to miserable self-absorption and endless concentration on our own needs and wants. Self-centeredness also leads to social disintegration. It is the root of all breakdowns in relationships at all levels of society. And, in some way that is difficult to explain, humanity’s refusal to serve God also led to our alienation from the natural world.

Thank God He didn’t leave us like that! The Son of God was born into the world to begin a new humanity, a community of people who would voluntarily lose their self-centeredness to begin a God-centered life, resulting – eventually and hopefully – in a reformation of all other relationships. Paul called Jesus “the last Adam”. The first Adam was tested in the Garden of Eden and failed. The last Adam was tested in the Garden of Gethsemane and overcame human self-centeredness. Adam knew that he would live if he obeyed God, but chose not to. Jesus knew that He would be crushed if He obeyed God, and chose to do so.

Why did Jesus die for us? What was His motivation? He already had a community of joy, glory and love in the triune God. He didn’t need us. He came into the world and died to deal with our sins, serving us, doing for us what He had been doing with the Father and the Spirit from eternity. He loves us without benefit to Himself.

I found that realization extremely moving. It was the first step out of my own self-centeredness and lack of trust. Jesus invites us to center our lives on Him. Respond to that invitation and all of your relationships will begin to heal. Remember, sin is centering your identity on anything other than God. Salvation is centering your identity where it should always have been centered in the first place – God.

There are those who would claim that when Jesus comes back, that will be the end of human history. Not so. We see in the final book of the Bible that heaven will descend into our world to heal it of all its brokenness and imperfection. Because creation was made in the image of a triune, interdependent God, the human race will finally come to live together in peace and interdependence.

Christianity is not just about getting our individual sins forgiven so we can go to heaven. That is a means of salvation, but it is not the purpose of it. The purpose of Jesus’ coming is to put the whole world right, to restore creation to its natural balance, not to escape from it. Salvation is not just about personal forgiveness and peace, but worldwide shalom. The work of the Holy Spirit is to save souls, but also to care and cultivate the material world, earth.

Outside the Bible, no other major religion holds out such hope for restoration of perfect justice and wholeness in this material world. Vinoth Ramachandra, a Sri Lankan Christian writer, noted that all other religions offer salvation as a form of liberation from ordinary humanness. Salvation is an escape from individuality and physical embodiment into some kind of transcendental spiritual existence. Biblical salvation, however is not about escape from this world. It’s about the transformation of the world we live in. This makes the Biblical vision unique, because no other faith holds out the promise for eternal salvation of the ordinary world that the cross and resurrection of Jesus does.

Becoming a part of God’s work in this world is a difficult concept for some. What does it mean to live a Christian life? God made us to share His own joy and delight in the same way that He enjoys these within Himself. We share His joy when we give Him glory (worship and service to Him rather than ourselves), when we honor and serve the dignity of others, and when we cherish His glory reflected through nature. This is how Christians are to live our daily lives. Moreover, the world and our hearts are broken. Jesus’ life, death and resurrection have the power to heal both.

The gospel makes sense of moral obligation and our belief in justice. Christians do restorative and redistributive justice wherever we can.

The gospel makes sense of our indelible human religiousness, so Christians do evangelism, point to forgiveness and reconciliation with God through Jesus.

The gospel makes sense of our profoundly relational character, so Christians work sacrificially to strengthen human communities around them as well as in the church.

The gospel makes sense of our delight in the presence of beauty, so Christians become stewards of the material world through science, gardening, art, music, etc. The Christian life means building up the Christian community through encouraging people to faith in Christ, but also building up the human community through service to our fellow man.

Christians were considered revolutionaries in the first century with good reason. We work for justice and truth and labor in expectation of a perfect world (Rev 21:4). We’re strangers here on earth right now, but someday, we’ll reach heaven and know we’ve come home. That will not be the end of our story however. CS Lewis affirmed that all the adventures we have ever had will end up being only “the cover and title page”(Lewis, The Last Battle, Collier, 1970, pp 171, 184). God’s got bigger plans for us than we can possibly know!