Greetings Bloggers,
Well, I don't know how you all felt about the chapters and verses missing in the letter to Timothy. Myself, I loved the reading without them, but it was harder to reference. What do you all think?
Check this out and see what you think too. 6:3 "If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing." coupled with last months - Galatians 5:10 "I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view."
For me, these verses assure me that I can be confident in the truth, and not believe as the world would have me believe - that I am not closed minded, or intolerant, or even self righteous because my thinking and actions are in line with God's truth and opposite of the world view. Like Romans 12 our minds need to be transformed into His will, His thinking, His views. We can not conform to this world, but rather we need to prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Steph
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Hi Stephanie - interesting comment on Timothy being told to keep to sound doctrine and associating that to being thought of as self righteous. Paul was very concerned at the beginnings of what would become the gnostic beliefs, where the spirit was separate from the body and bodily sin could not tarnish it. He was also concerned with the rise of aestheticism, where people thought they could achieve godliness through bodily purging, such as "sack cloth and ashes and self-flagellation. As in Galatians, where the Judaising teachers where trying to corrupt the teachings of Christ, the gnostic and aesthetic teachers were clouding the truth of Christ, that all men have sinned and require the cleansing blood of Christ for salvation. As it says in Galatians 2:16 we cannot be justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Christ. So Paul is urging Timothy to stick true to this teaching of faith in Christ', blood. He couples this with guidance on how to live pure and holy lives, as we see in I Thessalonian's and will later in Titus.
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