Money

1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.

10 ῥίζα γὰρ πάντων τῶν κακῶν ἐστιν ἡ φιλαργυρία, ἧς τινες ὀρεγόμενοι ἀπεπλανήθησαν ἀπὸ τῆς πίστεως καὶ ἑαυτοὺς περιέπειραν ὀδύναις πολλαῖς.

This may be one of the most misquoted verses in all of Scripture, right next to the verses that don't exist like, "Cleanliness is next to godliness" or "Heaven helps those who help themselves."  The word φιλαργυρία only appears here in the New Testament.  You have to look to the Apocrypha to find it in the Old Testament (4Ma 1:26).  The lexicons say that it means "love of money" or "avarice."  The problem is that the verse is sometimes quoted "Money is the root of all evil."  But that's not what it says, is it?

There are two extremes that we need to be careful about as we look at this verse.  First, there is the permissive side that takes it as a license to be as rich as possible.  As long as we don't "love" money we're fine, right?  This is tough to defend given all the commands about taking care of the less fortunate among us.  Clearly God does not want for us to just amass as much wealth as we are able to.  Or, as a pastor of mine once said, "Get all you can, can all you get, so you can sit on your can."  If we keep reading 1 Timothy 6 we see that Paul has different treasures in mind.

But then we also need to be careful not to fall into the other extreme.  Folks may read this and couple it with Jesus' commands in the Beatitudes to say that there is virtue in poverty.  I don't think that's what he's getting at here either.  There is nothing particularly noble about poverty and I'm sure most poor folks would agree.

Here in America we have more wealth than just about anywhere else in the world.  Even those in poverty live better than most folks in the world.  According to the Global Rich List, my salary puts me in the top 0.84% of income in the world.  Looking at it the other way, I make more money than 99.16% of the people in the world. And I'm hardly fabulously wealthy by American standards.  We think of rich as anyone who makes more money than we do.  

So what do we do with this?  Find some worthwhile mercy ministries and contribute.  Give faithfully at your church.  Give more and live on less.  We sponsor a child through World Vision for $35/month.  Can you live without one time eating out each month so that an orphan could be fed, clothed, and educated?  I am certainly not calling anyone to a life of poverty, but I do want to exhort you to think about how you live and how you may be able to help out.  We're pretty wealthy in this country whether we realize it or not.

A Little Wine

1 Timothy 5:23 (No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments.)

23 Μηκέτι ὑδροπότει, ἀλλὰ οἴνῳ ὀλίγῳ χρῶ διὰ τὸν στόμαχον καὶ τὰς πυκνάς σου ἀσθενείας.

This is one of those verses that seems to vex a number of people.  How can we be teetotalers if Paul tells Timothy to οἴνῳ ὀλίγῳ χρῶ?  He's not saying that Timothy should be getting drunk, but that a little wine is good for his stomach.  What to do with this?

One explanation I've heard is that we should translate οἴνῳ as grape juice here.  However, I looked at 3 lexicons and they all translate it as "wine."  Friberg writes, "iterally, of the juice of grapes, usually fermented."  So it is remotely possible that Paul could be telling Timothy to drink grape juice and not fermented wine.  The person who gave me this theory also said that the admonitions not to drink much wine are about fermented juice, but that Jesus actually just made grape juice.  The argument from John 2 is untenable because of the word μεθυσθῶσιν in verse 10 which refers to getting drunk.

Another explanation is a bit more nuanced.  It says that this actually defends abstaining from wine because that's what Timothy was doing.  Timothy was so concerned about his purity that he did not drink wine and Paul had to encourage him to do so.  That makes a certain amount of sense.

However, I think that the most reasonable way to read this is that Paul told Timothy to drink wine and, therefore, wine is not a bad thing by itself.  The abuse of it certainly is, but the wine is not the problem.  As Christians we can enjoy alcohol in moderation.  This is not something that we flaunt in front of others, particularly those who cannot partake in good conscience.

My goal with this as with any other passage is to make a reasonable exegesis not bound by cultural presuppositions.  I hope that I have accomplished that here.

Creation

1 Timothy 4:4 For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, 5 for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.

4 ὅτι πᾶν κτίσμα θεοῦ καλὸν καὶ οὐδὲν ἀπόβλητον μετὰ εὐχαριστίας λαμβανόμενον· 5  ἁγιάζεται γὰρ διὰ λόγου θεοῦ καὶ ἐντεύξεως.

It's hard to pick single passages to blog about because this book is so full of wisdom.  Here Paul is instructing Timothy about food and marriage.  Even though we have the record of Peter's vision before he took the gospel to Cornelius, apparently there was still need for instruction on this matter.  It would be unthinkable for a Jew to eat pork, but Paul is again opening up the door for it.

Paul is also commenting upon marriage.  Apparently there was a Gnostic influence at the time as there is today.  Folks thought that it was more sanctified not to be married.  I'm here to tell you that they were wrong and Paul was right.  Marriage is just better.  The marriage bed is meant to be enjoyed and not just for procreation.  This is not something that everyone can easily accept, but it is biblical.

God created things for our enjoyment.  The problem is that we pervert good things and turn them into gods.  Our culture has made a god out of sex.  We also have made a god out of food and rather than dealing with it we just try to manage it with various diets.  Here Paul tells us to enjoy what god made.  Enjoy His good creation.  That means things like appreciating the beauty of a sunset, an ocean view, or the wildflowers on the side of the highway.  It means enjoying good food and drink in moderation.  It means enjoying the gift of sex in the context of the marriage bed (which biblically is one man and one woman).  God gave us our senses to enjoy His creation.

Of course, let's be sure to remember the source of all this enjoyment.  Everything is for His glory.  That includes our senses.  πᾶν κτίσμα θεοῦ καλὸν.  Let's enjoy that!

A Noble Goal

1 Timothy 3:1 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.

1 Πιστὸς ὁ λόγος. Εἴ τις ἐπισκοπῆς ὀρέγεται, καλοῦ ἔργου ἐπιθυμεῖ.

This is a sobering verse as I consider what I'm going to do after finishing seminary.  If I were to get involved in a church I see that it is indeed a noble thing I seek.  But then we have the rest of 1 Timothy 3 to deal with.

Paul gets into the qualifications of an elder.  They are not trivial.  Am I "beyond reproach?"  Well, I'm pretty good.  However, to say that I'm "beyond reproach" stretches it a bit.  Go through all of them and it is easy to find shortcomings.  They may not be immediately obvious, but they are there and God certainly knows them.

But I'm encouraged by a couple of things.  One is that I am not the only one.  Ask any pastor (or better yet - his wife) if he has any sins in his life and the honest ones will tell you that they do.  They likely go beyond the petty to fairly serious too.  While I am no longer enslaved to pornography I am certainly tempted and have times when I still go down roads I know I shouldn't.  I am hardly beyond reproach.

The second source of encouragement is much greater.  Jesus lived a life beyond reproach.  When I die I am going to be judged by His righteousness.  While I strive to "be holy as [He is] holy," I will always fall short.  But thankfully I do not have to be perfect.  I need to be faithful.  And even that will waver at times, but He is always faithful even when I'm faithless.

This is just one more amazing thing about the cross.  What an awesome Savior!

One Way

1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.

5 εἷς γὰρ θεός, εἷς καὶ μεσίτης θεοῦ καὶ ἀνθρώπων, ἄνθρωπος Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς, 6  ὁ δοὺς ἑαυτὸν ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων, τὸ μαρτύριον καιροῖς ἰδίοις.

There is an ecumencial spirit afoot in our time that believes in many paths to God.  The goal of life is simply to live in a Christ-like way.  If we do that, these folks say, then we will be at one with the Divine.  That's all that really matters.

This passage tells us otherwise.  As we learned way back in John 14:6, Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light.  It is only through His sacrifice that man may be reconciled to God.  This passage speaks to the reality of what theologians call penal substitutionary atonement.  Christ paid our penalty for sin.  We deserved the death that He died on the cross.  He did this that we may live.

We do need to be careful with this verse though.  We see that He gave Himself as a ransom ὑπὲρ πάντων, which means literally, "in behalf of all."  The caution must be exercised with the definition of "all."  If we take this to mean every person who has ever and will ever live then we move toward universalism.  If we rip this out as a proof-text we can see that.  But if we read this within the canon of Scripture (and even just the surrounding verses) we see that Paul is saying something quite radical to his audience.  Christ died not just to save Jews, but also to save Gentiles.

In other words, when Paul writes "all" here, he refers to the fact that Christ's death secured the salvation of Gentile believers as well as Jewish believers.  He is not teaching universalism here, but rather explaining to the Jews that the love of God goes beyond the descendants of Abraham.  As a Gentile I rejoice in this fact.

Let this be a lesson to read every passage in its context, both immediate and far.  To do otherwise is quite dangerous lest we fall into universalism and lose all zeal for evangelism.