Meditating on 1 Timothy 6:11-21
“Take hold of the eternal life” followed Paul’s advice to Timothy to “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness” and “Fight the good fight of the faith”. Ultimately, they form a clear path that every Christian should focus on and do. This is true spirituality.
To the goal of godliness, which I had described as “expressing the truth of God in our lives”, Paul adds:
- “righteousness”, not merely the absence of sin but the presence of goodness, sound judgement, and right behaviour (which to my mind fall under the idea of honouring, or being on the right side of principles that God had built into the life he created);
- “faith” naturally should be “faith in God”, to implicitly trust in his goodness, which would cover everything else that we do not clearly know;
- “endurance”, which follows from “faith in God” and which acknowledges that our sinful nature will take patience and persistence to overcome; and
- “gentleness”, the antithesis of power and very much the way of love, that seeks to bring about change for good without being destructive.
At the same time, Paul calls on Timothy to “fight the good fight of the faith”. How is this different from “pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness”? Firstly, the context is now broader than the individual; it is “the faith” and not “faith” or “your faith”. The faith is the collection of truths, practices and institutions that Christ established, that underpins the Church, or, as I prefer to see it, the kingdom of God.
It is not that the kingdom of God is weak or unstable and requires us to defend it; it is that “the faith” has been established by Christ to nurture the faithful to be his true followers and we must fight the good fight of the faith in order that these, and those who will enter the kingdom in years to come, will be properly nourished, trained and guided.
“The faith”, as we can see right from the early days of the Church, is constantly under attack from without and within. The most dangerous attacks are those that undermine our understanding and practice of true spirituality (at least to my mind and, I suspect, to Paul’s mind as well). The theologians and scholars among us might disagree with me but as long as we are all minded to defend the faith, I think that the world is large enough for different emphases.
Why is “fighting the good fight of the faith” an important aspect of our true spirituality? Firstly it is a slightly different perspective from “pursue”. Fight implies not just barriers but enemies. There are elements in this world that are actively against the faith and therefore against our spiritual pursuit. At the very least, we must therefore beef up our defence by knowing the voice of our Lord deeply and intimately, from Scripture and from our walk with him. Fight implies that we must take the initiative and get our hands dirtied.
Secondly it calls on us to pay attention to “the faith” and not just “our own Christian living”. It is probably true that the degree of awareness of the faith differ from Christian to Christian and leaders and those who are responsible for the spiritual life of others will need to know much more. Yet we must all be aware that “the faith” has been given to us for our nurture and growth. To grow well and deeply we must draw on all that the faith provides (this means for example that our Christian life must be lived within a Christian community). Our involvement and participation will strengthen “the faith” and our love for it will cause us to defend it.
Finally, and to me it is a summary of the first two calls to pursue and to fight, Paul calls on Timothy to “take hold of the eternal life to which you were called”. In other words, grab it, embrace it, make sure, if nothing else, you have it; leave nothing to chance. “It” is the eternal life and is also “true spirituality” in the sense that the eternal life is the life of true spirituality.
It is interesting that the charge of the veteran Christian leader to the up-and-coming one is not to look after the church or seek the lost but to truly know and experience the life that Christ offers. It is a principle that I think Christian leaders rarely consider: you cannot lead people to experience what you have not experienced yourself; and the second, you must not lead people to do what you are not doing yourself (broadly, of course, as all of us are mere individuals). And so the most important focus of all Christian leaders and teachers is to take hold of the eternal life to which you were called.
However, “take hold” implies to me deep intention and deep intention translates to passion. This leads me to another discovery that I have made as I study the Scriptures: the bible is bursting with passion. Everywhere there is a constant call to joy and we read so much of the emotions that God experienced as he walked with Israel in the Old Testament, from deep disgust, to hate, to love and longing, to tender care. The birth of Jesus was greeted by a throng of angels singing in a choir! Jesus further alludes to the joy in heaven when a sinner repents, likening it to the joy of a shepherd who found his sheep which was lost.
Yet I see so little joy, so little emotion, so little passion in the churches I have been with about the eternal life to which we have been called. Many churches resort to manufacturing excitement through lively singing and shouting slogans. People are listless; church is a chore; and we have to be guilt into bible study and evangelism and even CG meetings. How many of us long to be with other Christians during the time when assemblies of people were prohibited because of the Covid-19 crisis? How many of us spent the time in pursuit of a deeper spiritual life?
“Take hold” is not about something that will happen when we get to heaven. “Take hold” is about this life, here and now. How can we feel so little unless we have, in truth, not really taken hold and perhaps, the life of this world has taken hold of us?
It is not so much that we must be happy, joyful and expressive people (that would be a real challenge to me!); it is that when we fail to be passionate about the life that our Lord died, and our God raised him, and the Holy Spirit indwells us so that we may have this life, will we really take hold of it? When I was in my teens, someone shared an observation of birds pecking away at the seeds that someone had thrown on the ground for them, noticing that they were pecking away at the edges rather than venturing into the centre where the seeds were concentrated. God opened her eyes to how most of us do the same, just pecking away at the edges, rather than venturing to where the good stuff really is.
True spirituality, the eternal life to which we are called, is something to pursue, to fight, and to embrace with a passion, or it will be just a pale shadow of its reality.
(My reflections on 1 Timothy 4-6 include “Honour” as a life principle, The corruption of the mind, Godliness with contentment, and True spirituality.)