Paul writes as an apostle of Christ, sent by the command of God. God here is cited as our saviour. Salvation is the work of God, through Jesus Christ. And Christ is our hope. What does it mean to say Christ is our hope? He is the grounds for our hope, because He paid for our sins, and He was raised from the dead. So we know that we are forgiven, and that death is not the end. But He is our hope. Jesus is the first born. We will be raised like Him, and are being transformed to become like Him.
Paul writes to Timothy not just as a teacher, and certainly not as his "boss", but as a spiritual father. But while there is a relationship between Paul and Timothy, grace, mercy and peace come from God the Father and Christ Jesus.
Timothy had been left in Ephesus by Paul in order to counter false teachers and false teachings. These false teachings may have later developed in Gnosticism. Timothy was also to counter those who devoted themselves to myths and genealogies. Ie "proving" all sorts of silly things, supposedly from the OT. We have lots of this sort of nonsense around today as well, and I believe we should be very wary of people who seek to prove all sorts of things by seemingly clever numerology, or similar misuse of Scripture. If a teaching is weird and esoteric then it is a fair bet that it is nonsense.
These sort of teachings have a superficial veneer of wisdom, but are actually nonsense, and they seek to put our confidence in something other than faith in Jesus Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment