Friday • 9/23/2022 • pastorals_10

Today’s is the tenth of ten devotionals that treat Paul’s last three letters — those to his ministry proteges, Timothy and Titus. Last week, in the first three devotionals on the so-called Pastoral Epistles, 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus, we saw how God overcomes our lack of faith, hope, and love. Following those three meditations are four devotionals in which we show how God implants in us basic ingredients of human flourishing, what are often called the classical “cardinal virtues”: godliness and temperance (which we treated last Thursday and Friday), and justice and courage (which we treated Monday and Tuesday of this week). Finally, in these last three devotionals of this special series on the Pastorals, we see how Paul inspires us to faith, hope, and love.

An audio or video version of this devotional can be found here: Apple Podcast, Spotify Podcast, YouTube

We close this series on the Pastoral Epistles where we started: with faith, hope, and love. These three are often called the “theological virtues.” And today we focus on love. 

I went to a seminary that was dedicated to the restoration of the integrity, understandability, and applicability of the Bible in the face of its critics, demythologizers, and revisionist (heterodox at best and heretical at worst) interpreters. I personally was there, recently graduated from college with a degree in sociology, hoping also to build a theological base so I could help the church hammer out a political and social theology. We were there to learn how to fix things — all, or most of us, to correct the church of its errors; I was there, in addition, to learn how to bring Christ’s voice to the corridors of power. 

One of the most dramatic moments in seminary, at least for me, took place in my first days there. It was a chapel talk delivered by Professor John Frame, of whom I had never heard, but who was to shape my head and heart like no other theologian. Professor Frame’s text that day was 1 Timothy 1:3–7 (I don’t remember the translation he used, but many of us back then used the NASB):

Just as I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, to remain on at Ephesus so that you would instruct certain people not to teach strange doctrines (heterodidaskalein), 4 nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to useless speculation rather than advance the plan of God, which is by faith, so I urge you now.

5 But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from a sincere faith. 6 Some people have strayed from these things and have turned aside to fruitless discussion, 7 wanting to be teachers of the Law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions.

The gist of Professor Frame’s message (as best I can recall decades after the fact) was this: Yes, we need to counter the teachers of strange doctrines and the demythologizers who compromise the truth of the gospel by dismissing its straightforward story of God redeeming lost sinners through Christ. Yes, in the corridors of power and in the halls of legislature, we need to be ambassadors of that God whose Word still governs the universe, and who has reconciled the world — and all things — to himself in Christ. 

But all of that is so much “blowing in the wind” without love. We dare not attempt to confront error and speak truth to power without keeping central this one thing: love. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul explores love’s many-splendored manifestations. Here in 1 Timothy 1:5, Paul stresses three things that make it deeply existential. 

1 — Love that comes from a cleansed heart. We think and live according to “what the heart wants” (to return to a Thomas Cranmer and Ashley Null observation from last Wednesday). When we reckon with the reality of what’s in our hearts, we are forced to agree with Jeremiah, that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). 

It was precisely for a cleansed heart that David prayed when repenting of his sin against Bathsheba and Uriah, and preeminently against Yahweh: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Which is why even now we begin worship: “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your Holy Name.” 

Love that comes from a cleansed heart keeps short accounts with God. Love that comes from a cleansed heart confesses frequently and repents deeply. 

2 — Love that comes from a good conscience. We are fallen people living in a fallen world. It’s easy for us to lose perspective on our lives. It’s easy to become confused about what and why and how we are doing what we are doing. Our conscience is our “co-knower” (Latin: con+scientia; Greek: sun+oida). It is a fantastic capacity God has given us to stand outside ourselves and assess what we are doing. God gives us this “co-knower” to remind us that the ends do not justify the means and that it’s important to do what we do in a godly, just, temperate, and courageous way — to be ruled always by faith, hope, and above all by love. As Francis Schaeffer used to say: “We are called to do God’s work in God’s way.” 

Once, a Christian friend felt he had been lied about by another Christian, and that it had cost my friend his job. He went to the person he thought had gotten him wrongly fired. The frank response was: “You, sir, are on the wrong side of a culture war. And in a wartime ethic, normal rules don’t apply.” 

That’s horrifying in any setting, though it happens all around us. In fact, Paul tells the Ephesians they are surrounded by worldly people whose hearts are hardened and calloused so that they have no moral compass (see Ephesians 4:17–19). But among Christians? Really?! Alas, as Paul warns Timothy ministering in that same Ephesus, as shocking as it is, it is possible for apparent believers to let their consciences become seared (literally, “cauterized”), letting themselves become insensate to the difference between right and wrong, truth and falsity (1 Timothy 4:2). 

When Paul says love comes from a good conscience, he means that love makes sure our ends and our means line up. My friend’s accuser should have been ashamed of himself — that’s conscience’s job! The kingdom of God consists of “justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit,” not in cheating, dissembling, and rule-bending. Love “rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6b). 

3 — Love that comes from sincere faith. A more literal (and I suggest more accurate) translation is to be found in the Revised Geneva Translation: “faith without hypocrisy” (ek…pisteōs anupokritou). Borrowing a mental picture from the world of drama, Paul means that love flows from a faith that doesn’t carry an array of masks that it can change to fit the character it is playing. There’s not one identity that I take on as a “Christian,” another as a Republican or a Democrat. There’s not one identity I take on as a citizen of the Kingdom of God, and another as a flag-waver or a flag-burner, as a member of this movement or that movement. It all must flow out of, and be subject to correction, by my singular identity as a follower of Christ. 

There are many elements that go into my formation as a person: my genes, the story of my family of origin, my ZIP code. But a “faith without hypocrisy” puts that all up for grabs for one fundamental shaping self-identifier: “I belong — body and soul, mind and emotion, in life and in death — to my Lord Jesus Christ.” 

May we contend well, then, for that which is true. May we work well for that which is just. And in it all, may the love of Christ purify our hearts, shape our consciences, and keep our faith mask-free.  

Be blessed this day, 

Reggie Kidd+

Image: Winston110063002, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons