Behave Yourself

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     You’ve probably noticed, but in case you haven’t, these letters I write each week have, for the past twenty-two months, tracked with our all-church Bible reading plan… mostly. Like the Sunday morning teaching schedule, the choice of topics has been highly influenced by the pace and placement of Scripture. Except… like over the four previous weeks: we were base-camped in Colossians for the “Replacing God” series – and ended up missing both letters to the Thessalonians, both letters to Timothy, and the one to Titus. Philemon flew by yesterday. Oops. Unable to keep pace with the plan, I nevertheless reserve the right to revisit the letters I missed, because we simply have to see what’s in them.

     Paul’s first letter to Timothy is the “quick start guide” for any church who recognizes Jesus as Lord. From eldership to family to weeding out false teaching, no essential subject of the church is left untreated. And in this week’s letter to you, I’ll probably be most helpful if I go straight to the purpose of Paul’s letter, the reason for his writing. Having set Timothy as a leader and liaison in the Ephesian church, he wrote back with more instruction:

I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth (1Timothy 3:14-15).

     You gotta love the so-that’s. I am writing these things to you so that… no guesswork, no hypothesizing over “Gee, why did I get this letter?” If the reader gets anything at all, whatever comes immediately after the so-that must be got. Paul, breathing in what God breathed out, wrote so that you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God.

     Some years back I wrote a report for Cobblestone’s elders, precociously titled “A Short History of the Contemporary Church”. It was a serious work (in my world anyway); only the title was precocious (or maybe presumptuous). In it I described how the Christian church in Western cultures, given a chance to engage the divorce boom of the 1950’s, made matters worse instead of better. Along comes the sexual revolution of the ‘60’s. Same. The drug culture of the ‘70’s. Ditto… again. Instead of moving outward with truth the church turned inward, not trusting the truth to hold its own in the big bad world. Those three decades gave rise to the Me Culture of the ‘80’s (which is with us still, and causes no end of troubles), and the separation of church from everybody else was mostly complete. Forty years of radio silence had caused culture to look for some semblance of the truth in the wiggly world of pop psychology. Meanwhile, somebody in Christendom – I won’t venture to assign credit to any one person, though a few prime candidates come to mind – figured the best way to reach culture was to meet people where they were, and the race was on.

     Sermons in contemporary churches – or “coffee churches,” as I sometimes call us – ran quickly to the self-help genre, their titles often beginning with “How to…” The successful speaker would make the gospel “accessible.” I remember participating in outreach projects described as “low-risk/high-grace”. (Did you catch the contradiction in terms?) At a conference, I heard a hot-selling Christian author and pastor brag that a newcomer had been in his bar-styled church four months before realizing it was a church. To break out of its self-imposed isolation, the church became like non-church culture. Honestly, it was fun for a while – and a necessary stage, I’ll still say – but the whole strategy had outlived its usefulness in less than twenty years. Way less. Problem is, coffee churches, historically, have had a hard time letting go and moving on.

     Enter: First Timothy, and Paul getting all up in our faces about behavior. Having become an adopted cousin of pop psychology, the contemporary church wanted to skip behavior altogether. The slogan was: “We’re looking for heart-change, not behavior modification.” Dude, behavior is a mighty solid indicator of heart-change… or lack thereof. Without omniscience, what else we got?

     Paul was given three names for the church, which he has passed on to every reader of his letter: 1) the household of God, 2) the church of the living God, and 3) a pillar and buttress of the truth. And here’s how much we can trust God: when we know those names he’s given us, and own them on a heart level, the behaviors will follow. We will trust the truth to hold its own. As the Twenty-Third Psalm says, He leads (us) in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (verse 3). Our God will forever and always bring glory to his name. The hardest part for us to get, it seems, is that he uses us, his namesake, to accomplish the goal. Not all at once, but surely.

     As a kid/teen/young adult in the Sixties/Seventies/Eighties, I was witness to the weirdness that had become the Christian church in Western culture. I saw the beginnings of the name-it-and-claim-it, blab-it-and-grab-it Prosperity Gospel. I saw the rise and fall of the most audacious televangelists. When the Third Wave of Pentecostalism came ashore, I was a quiet observer. As a yet-to-be-saved person living among mostly saved people, I couldn’t imagine this was what Jesus had intended for his Church. Something had to give. And something did. And something will again, since the Bridegroom is constantly sanctifying his bride.

     At times I’m tempted to think the Church could have taken a different path than the isolation of the Fifties through the Eighties. Maybe the Church could have stuck with being a pillar and buttress of the truth, come what may. I’m also tempted at times to think we could have chosen a better strategy than becoming just like culture, falling into all the same whirligig commotions. But no. Jesus knows what he’s doing. Like planting a tree, the best time to do that was twenty years ago, and the next-best time is right now. The only thing worse than having regrets is being stuck in them.

     If practicing godly behaviors, whether you feel like it or not, is the only way you have right now of knowing if you own the title “child of God” on a heart level – by all means, have at it. The same apostle who wrote to Timothy said to the Christians in Rome that by testing we would know what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2). In the same letter, he wrote, hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (5:5). Coming up on my fortieth “Christian birthday,” I can tell you that the feeling precedes the action at times, and other times the feeling follows. Best I can tell, the Father is not displeased either way.

     Meanwhile, a godly example is set – and an oh-so-appealing example it is – for a world that has been left too long in the swirl of moral chaos. Absent the mind of Christ (1Corinthians 2:16), there’s no reason to expect unbelievers to think and act like Christians. On the flip-side of that same coin, since Christians do have the mind of Christ, there’s no reason for us to keep on thinking and acting like unbelievers. How does a person – how does a church – make a difference? By being different.

     If First Timothy didn’t make much of an impact last time you read the letter, I’ll urge you to go through again – this time pivoting on the so-that of 3:14. God was willing to let one whole book of the Bible hang on how one ought to behave. I can’t find a good reason to take it otherwise.         

  

Grace and Peace (and a sharp eye for the so-that’s),

 

John