Main news for 9 December 2022

King James Version (en)

1 Timothy, Chapter 6, verses 13-14

¹¹ What Timothy is to flee, and what to follow

¹³I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession;

¹⁴That thou keep this commandment without spot, unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ:

NOTES

As he concludes his letter to Timothy, Paul reminds his disciple of the main task of a servant of the Church, which...

As he concludes his letter to Timothy, Paul reminds his disciple of the main task of a servant of the Church. It is also, however, the main task of every Christian: the task of bearing witness to the Kingdom so that the world may see it, and so that everyone seeking new life may know where to look for it (vv. 11-16).

Returning to the theme of wealth, the apostle, adding to what he has said already, by no means closes the door of the Kingdom to the rich, just as the Savior Himself did not close it when He said that it is hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom, but never claimed that it is impossible. The apostle, as we can see, explains what the difficulty consists in: in order to receive the Kingdom, a rich person must stop thinking of his wealth as something on which he can lean in life (vv. 17-19). The point is not only that, when he dies, the richest and most influential person in the world can take no more wealth with him than a beggar who has lived all his life on alms. Many understood this and spoke about it long before the Savior came into the world. The point, above all, is where the rich person's spiritual attention is focused, toward what his will is directed, or, in Gospel terms, where his treasure and his heart are.

Wealth really does provide support and power in our world that is being transformed, but it provides them precisely to the extent that the world has not yet been transformed. The habit of relying on such support, as well as using such power, can play a cruel trick on the possessor of wealth when it comes to spiritual life in the proper sense of the word, to life in the Kingdom and the relationships that define it. On coming into contact with the Kingdom, everyone discovers his own unreadiness and inadequacy. Yet a person who has already had to experience something similar, a person with the relevant experience, finds it easier to pass through the disappointment, inevitable for fallen human nature, that usually accompanies such an experience, and perhaps even through resentment. Meanwhile, both disappointment and resentment, though not fatal in themselves, can easily drag on and become, at the least, a serious obstacle on the spiritual path, and at the most, turn a person away altogether from the Kingdom and from spiritual life. Paul warns the rich against this mistake, a mistake that can cost them the Kingdom and eternal life.

As he concludes his letter to Timothy, his testament, the apostle Paul urges his disciple to “keep the commandment”...

Paul evidently considers the Christian's main task to be keeping the commandment - in purity and without flaw, "blamelessly." The expression "to keep the commandment" meant to follow the Torah and preserve it. Precisely preserve it: the matter was first of all...

But if we speak of keeping the commandment precisely in purity and without flaw, then here it was already necessary to speak not only of the inner Torah, but also of the human person as a living Torah. Of that very Christian ideal connected with becoming like Christ and constituting the meaning of the Christian spiritual path as the first Christians understood it. It is this path that the apostle reminds Timothy about. For Timothy what was said was all the more relevant because in the Church he bore, judging by everything we learn about him from the letters addressed to him, the ministry of a teacher-rabbi.

In such a ministry the question of the inner Torah, of the becoming of a person in Christ as a living Torah, came to the forefront: besides walking this path himself, the teacher had to help others walk it, those who might need such help. And especially often rich and influential people needed it. Indeed, every spiritual path, and especially the Christian one, presupposes poverty, of course not as a material condition but as a spiritual state. In order to be filled with God's breath, the breath of the Kingdom, a person must become nothing before God, whoever he may be in the world and whatever position he may occupy in it.

The richer a person is, the higher his social status, the more majestic becomes the illusion that appears to him, that he also means something before God. That is why it is hard for a rich and highly placed person to enter the Kingdom, not because of wealth itself. And Paul reminds Timothy of the need to remind the rich constantly where true wealth awaits them, so that they do not lose their way, blinded by the mirages of worldly wealth, glory, and influence.

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