Month: November 2025

Week 48  1 Timothy 5

The sins of some are obvious, reaching the place of judgment ahead of them; the sins of others trail behind them. In the same way, good deeds are obvious, and even those that are not obvious cannot remain hidden forever.
The big picture Paul draws here is that people fall into one of two categories: Group A (Bad People) & Group B (Good People). Paul then goes on to subdivide each group.
In Group A (Bad People) there are two cohorts. The first cohort is made up of bad people who are clearly & obviously bad. The second cohort is made up of bad people who are bad – but not obviously-bad (from all appearances  they live fairly good-looking bad lives).
In Group B (Good People) there’s one cohort that live identifiably & outstandingly good-looking good lives. Then there’s a second cohort that live less-detectibly good lives (subtly-good lives).
There might be some trouble distinguishing the second cohorts in Group A and Group B. That second cohort in Group A is not showing obviously-bad actions and they might be mistaken for Group B people who are living ambiguously  good lives.
I think Paul’s main point in the paragraph is that the life I live will eventually be evaluated.
But this other idea is pretty interesting too. There’s a guy who doesn’t look too bad on the surface…but in reality is. Whereas a guy who seems pretty ho-hum turns out not to be.

Note: quote from 1 Timothy 5:24-25 (NIV). Reading report: 95% completed.

Week 48  1 Timothy 1

Here’s the very first thing Paul told Timothy: command certain people not to teach false doctrines any longer.
What I wondered was: what were the false doctrines Paul was talking about?
I decided to quick-read the letter from-beginning-to-end and find those unorthodox beliefs. Sad to say but I didn’t find what I was after. But I did find three things.
1. Paul mostly didn’t name specific false teachings. He stuck with generic expressions:
myths and endless genealogies
controversial speculations
godless myths
godless chatter
falsely called knowledge
The only specific examples of false teaching I found were:
forbidding people to marry
ordering people to abstain from certain kinds of food.
2. I was surprised to see that one of the repercussions of bad teaching is that people who buy into it will eventually abandon the faith (a bit later Paul reaffirms this. They have: departed from the faith).
3. And if #2 (abandoning the faith) isn’t bad enough there’s another problem. People who make a switch to false doctrine have started to follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. They’ve turned away to follow Satan.
I initially figured that the “false doctrines” Paul was thinking about were garden-variety errors. Minor misunderstandings. But it looks like there’s more to them. Directionally-speaking false doctrines seem to be aiming me straight into the danger zone.
So two Useful Personal Questions: a) how far off-the-beaten-path is this idea going to take me? And b) is it worth the risk?

Note: quotes from 1 Timothy 1:3-4 4:7 6:20 4:3 4:1 6:21 5:15 (NIV)

 

Week 48  2 Thessalonians 2

Paul says up-front what chapter 2 is about: the coming of our Lord.
He names two specific things that have to happen before the Lord comes back to earth: that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.
So first there has to be a rebellion.
Then secondly a person called the man-of-lawlessness has to appear. Paul describes him:
• he will oppose & exalt himself over everything that is called God
• he will oppose & exalt himself over everything that is worshiped
• he will set himself up in God’s temple
• he will proclaim himself to be God.
(This sounds like a pretty sobering development and I feel relieved when Paul says that in spite of all his self-aggrandizing power-grabbing the man-of-lawlessness is doomed to destruction.)
If I drew a line graph representing the trend of the man-of-lawlessness’ life it would zoom right to the very top of the graph. But then moving left-to-right across the graph the line would drop-like-a-stone and not stop until it hit the bottom.

Notes: quotes from 2 Thessalonians 2:1 3-4 (NIV). Like some other forecasts in the bible I wish this one was a bit more definitive. One takeaway: the man-of-lawlessness is a pathologically arrogant and dangerously malign character.

 

Week 48  Colossians 2

Before long I see that this is a pretty complex chapter and since one of my goals in reading is understandability I’m wondering how I can decomplexify the section.
I check for paragraph divisions. One version has 7 paragraphs and another had 5. I need finer divisions. I look for independent phrases – short ideas with something to say. I find ~36 of them. Here’s a for instance:
Paul is concerned about his readers: that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
A single sentence made up of several connected – but different – phrases or ideas. I see that:
• Paul wants reader’s hearts to be encouraged
• He wants them to love each other
• If they love each other they’ll gain understanding
• They’ll also start to know God’s “mystery”
• God’s mystery – Paul says – is Christ
• And the mystery that Christ can offer people is wisdom & knowledge.
One complicated sentence. Breaking it down helps a little.
When I’m reading there’s a principle I come back to: if something is too unmanageably big for me in-the-aggregate then I can try disaggregating it.
The goal of disaggregating isn’t disaggregation. It’s goal is to help me understand what Paul’s saying – finessing things to catch-his-drift. (But keeping in mind that I have to let Paul say what he’s actually saying.)

Note: quote from Colossians 2:2-3 (ESV)

Week 47  Colossians 1

Paul says this about the Lord: he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son.
When people believe in the Lord they’re “rescued” (some other versions use delivered or transferred). In one way it sounds a bit like being an immigrant – moving from one country to another. But not exactly. It’s true to say that I’m a natural-born citizen of Darkness and that I leave there and relocate to the Kingdom of God. But immigration implies that I was free to leave. Paul is saying that I was not free to leave. I needed to be “rescued”. So I’m more like a refugee.
I wondered if Paul said anything more about me being like a refugee and so I decided to speed-read through Colossians. But it looks like Paul didn’t use the refugee idea again. I did see that he mentioned a couple of similar ideas (once-you-were-one-thing but now-you’re-another):
• Once you were far away. Now you’re near
• Once you were an enemy. Now you’re a friend
• Once dead. Now alive
• Once preoccupied with earth. Now interested in heaven
• Once having an old nature. Now having a new one.
The examples are different but the ideas are pretty much the same. Coming into faith means change. Adjustment. Evolution. Development. Process. Metamorphosis.
Statis doesn’t seem to be part of the agenda.

Note: quote from Colossians 1:13 (NIV). References to 1:21-22 2:13 3:1-2 & 9-10

Week 47  Philippians 2

Paul tells the people in Philippi: continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
Paul’s advice about working-out-my-salvation sounds like a collaborative effort. I work & the Lord works. Teamwork.
Let’s say I’m planting a tree. My friend comes over to help. If he works extra hard and does most of the donkey-work I can see that. If he slacks-off I see that too. My friend’s contribution is observable & measurable.
Of course Paul’s interest is Salvation Work – not tree-planting. The other difference is that when it comes to the Lord working with me his assistance is less detectable. A different kind of teamwork.
A concrete example of Salvation Work is right there in the next verse: do everything without grumbling or arguing. So I work at trying not to grumble or argue about something. Even though it’s me trying I figure that it’s very possible that at that very moment – in the background – the Lord’s collaboration is helping me avoid a pointless argument. Even though I have no idea about the extent of his help.
Sometimes I might have an I-don’t -know-how-I-did-it moment where I act unnaturally or abnormally. And so I credit the Lord. But other times I’m just trying to do what I know to do – and assuming that somehow I’m getting some back-up.

Note: quotes from Philippians 2:12 13 14 (NIV)

 

Week 47  Philippians 1

Paul’s prayer to the church:
This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight,
so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.
It’s a pretty interesting prayer. I break it down…personalize it.
Paul’s hope & prayer is that my love will grow. The love he’s talking about isn’t static. It has a dynamic quality. It’s process-oriented.
Paul divides the growth & expansion of love into two similar spheres: a) increased knowledge and b) increased depth-of-insight. Whatever the exact difference is between them the point is that expanding-love isn’t random. Directionally-speaking it’s targeted at knowledge-and-wisdom.
(I notice that Paul doesn’t say anything about how I feel. The love he’s referring to starts with knowledgeableness. With wisdom.)
One of the benefits of Knowledgeable Love is that I’ll be able to discern what is best – that’s how Paul puts it. I’ll be able to sort through things…make distinctions…be more discriminating. It’s an advantageous development.
And even though being more discriminating is it’s own big benefit Paul says there’s two connected by-products: a) becoming blameless and b) gaining righteous (he calls them fruits of righteousness).
It’s a transformative process. I start as one kind of person. I evolve into another  kind. (I notice nothing is said about the change being easy or straightforward.)

Note: quote from Philippians 1:9-11 (NIV)

Week 46  Galatians 1

I’m not far into the letter before I see this: I am amazed that you are so quickly turning…to a different gospel – not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are troubling you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.
It’s a niggling question but I wondered why Paul called this new teaching a different gospel when it was in reality an erroneous substitute.
If I was writing it I’d have said something like this: “You started with the Basic Gospel – the ‘good news’ of Jesus. But now you’ve hived-off into a grotesque alternate. I can understand Clarificatory Adjustments – you update define qualify adjust modify explain revise tweak rearrange alter. Fair enough. But what you’re doing is reinventing the Basic Gospel. It’s not the Gospel. You’ve modified it past the point-of-no-return. Here’s what you need to do: Start with the Basic Gospel and Stick with it. Starting requires Sticking.”
Okay…I know I’m putting words in Paul’s mouth. He didn’t say that. But the rewriting exercise helped me in two ways: a) it clarified what I think Paul was saying and b) it reminded me that with the Basic Gospel I’m on a specifically defined trajectory and whatever directional fine-tuning I do I can’t stray from the established path.

Note: quote from Galatians 1:6-7 (CSB). I’ve thought about this topic before in ‘different gospel’ (November 5/2020) and ‘a hybrid gospel’ (November 6/2020).

Week 45  2 Corinthians 13

Near the very end of the letter Paul recommended a self-administered examination: test yourself to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourself.
If I’m testing to see whether I’m in-the-faith then I figure I need to know what I’m testing myself against. So I started looking in the last nine verses of the letter for specific suggestions.
In those final verses Paul does specify a couple of general things (I’m a bit disappointed since I want specifics…not generalities). But anyway what I get is a) one long suggestion and then b) a couple of shorts ones mashed together in one verse.
The first is: do nothing wrong…do what is right. So that’s a pretty good tip-off about what I’m testing for (Paul talks a bit more about this two-sides-of-the-same-coin idea – do right & don’t do wrong – in the next three verses).
Then there’s a group of short suggestions: finally…rejoice. Become mature, be encouraged, be of the same mind, be at peace. I reformat it:
Rejoice
Become mature
Be encouraged
Be of the same mind
Be at peace.
So those are some of the categories I’m aiming for. Big principles. Comprehensive ideas. Things I have to mine for specifics. But they at least point me in the right direction when I test myself and ask: am I in the faith?

Note: quotes from 2 Corinthians 13:5 (I changed the plural yourselves to singular) & 13:7 11 (CSB).

 

Week 45  2 Corinthians 10

Paul didn’t have a completely captive audience in Corinth. One of the things his critics said was that Paul: walked according to the flesh. I checked a couple of versions and they more-or-less confirmed the language. Paul was:
living according to the flesh
living by the standards of this world
operating according to human standards
working in a worldly way.
I wondered what was behind that complaint. Paul always seemed like an extravagantly religious guy to me. How people figured he was a worldly-guy was a bit of a mystery.
I couldn’t see how people would have thought Paul was a non-religious or anti-religious guy. Paul was definitely a religious guy. Their problem seemed to be that his religion let him inch too close to the standards of this world. So apparently Paul was not putting enough distance between himself and the world.  And the only religious group that I know who would have come up with that kind of strict avoid-the-world line would be the rigorous observers of the OT (and Paul had a pretty extensive history of locking-horns with them).
Paul was usually complimentary about the OT. But his position was that the regulations of the OT was not the right hill-to-die-on. The NT gospel had made some key adjustments. For some people those modifications were life-changers. But for others they were dangerous innovations.

Note: quote from 2 Corinthians 10:2 (NASB NIV NCB NCV with slight modifications)