Counter Cultural Identity
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Handout
We are continuing this week in 1 Timothy. Remember the goal of this study is for you to live out your faith on purpose. To be intentional about growing in the truth and living out this new identity we have in Jesus. Its about standing on the truth and protecting the hope that we have been entrusted with. Last week we talked about how Paul had a new identity in Christ. He was the chief of sinners but Jesus has radically transformed His life. He is charging Timothy to continue in living out this new identity, to fight the good fight, to hold on to the faith, to live his life with integrity. Paul ends chapter 1 by calling out by name those who are are entering into the church under the disguise of spirituality while also seeking leadership positions in the church so that they can control, manipulate, and hurt people in the church.
Pray for All People
Pray for All People
We pick up in chapter 2 with Paul showing us more about how we live out the new identity within the church and the community we live in.
First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.
As leaders in our churches and communities we are called to pray for others. There is something humbling about praying for other people. It requires that you care for somebody other than yourself. More than that, Paul isn’t telling Timothy to pray for only the people he likes but for those in power over him. Kings, those in high positions. The same men who were putting Paul in jail, and who wished to cause Christians harm. The response of the Christian to persecution isn’t a closed fist but folded hands.
Do you care about your community?
Do you want to see the lost and broken in our community find the hope of Jesus?
It makes God happy when we pray, care for, and serve other people. Think about that. You can bring a smile to the face of the creator of the universe simply by loving people who are made in His image. Paul says we pray that we might live a peaceful, quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This doesn’t mean we remain silent against injustice. In the last chapter Paul was very vocal about abuse and injustice in the church. But it does mean we demonstrate the life and example of Jesus who showed unyielding grace and prayed for even His enemies. We make God happy by living in the example Jesus has set for us. Why? Because it offers people who are hurting and broken an opportunity to follow Jesus.
This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.
What is God’s heart in these verses? That those whom He loves might come to know Him and love Him too. John 3:16 tells us of God’s love towards the world. It was because of God’s unfailing love that Jesus came to the earth, endured the suffering of men, died a brutal death on the cross, and rose again on the third day. The Gospel. The hope of mankind. The motivation and desire of God is to bring all people to a saving faith and He is using us to make known His plan of redemption.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The Gospel of Jesus brings us into our new identity. That is what Paul tells us in chapter 1. He was chief of sinners but by grace God has forgiven his sins and made him alive in Christ Jesus. That story of the Gospel, that gave him a new identity is now the sole focus of his life and ministry. Does that make sense? The good news of the Gospel is not a one and done event. The Gospel is what makes us right with God in justification and what grows us in our relationship to God through sanctification. How do you live out this new life purchased for you by Jesus? By resting in the finished work of God and sharing that with people who need the hope of Jesus.
Verse of the Day
Verse of the Day
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.
Lets break this down.
There is one God. Everything that isn’t God that disobeys God has to answer to God. He is sovereign king over all of His creation. There is no threat to His reign. No question in His power. We as created beings answer ultimately to our creator and since we have sinned against God we have to answer to Him. There is one mediator between God and men. If this were a court case and we were standing before our Judge there is only one person who mediates between God and mankind. That means any chance we have of surviving God’s punishment against sin rests in the hands of this mediator. Who is this man? It is Jesus Christ. God in human flesh. Our defense against God’s wrath is not what we have done or accomplished but is instead that God became a man and gave Himself to pay the ransom for our souls. God gave Himself as the sacrifice so that when we stood before Him in judgement our souls would be secure in what Christ has done for us. This testimony of God’s grace and power has been given to us so that we might share this good news with others.
This Gospel directly informs who Paul is.
For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
Paul was specifically called to be a preacher and apostle in the Gospel. And all of us likewise have been called to follow Jesus and bear witness about Jesus in our various roles and capacities in the church.
The next section of 1 Timothy 2 is deeply cultural. Paul is going to give instruction for the men and women in the church in a direct response to the culture in Ephesus where Timothy is pastoring. When we look at Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that would have been written around this same time we see that there was a problem with division within the church and within their marriages because of the pagan lifestyle they were coming out of. It was division over authority, doctrine, how the church should function, and so Paul calls them to unity.
I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.
Every person has their own roles, responsibilities and callings, but they are united in one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one Gospel. He continues
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
So we enter into this section understanding that we are equal and united under the Gospel of Christ that makes no distinction for gender, age, financial status, or occupation.
The Ephesian culture was drenched in sorcery and idolatry. In Acts 19 when Paul first gets to Ephesus their is an incident with some guys known as the sons of Sceva in which these men tried to cast out a demon and get chased out of the building. People saw this and began to believe Paul’s teaching.
Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
This trend did not last long among the people in Ephesus because as people were leaving their idolatry, the craftsmen who made idols started losing money. There was a riot in Ephesus and Paul ends up leaving to go to Greece. While Ephesus went back to the old way of living once Paul left the believers in Ephesus were left to live out their faith in a community that was overwhelmingly opposed to the Gospel.
His instructions to the men
I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling;
In Acts the men of Ephesus were angry because, quote, “The gods made with hands are not gods”. Paul says rather than committing your hands to the creation of idols and false gods lift holy hands to the true God in prayer. Paul calls the men to commit their hands to the work of the almighty God, not in anger or quarreling but in peace and grace. This demonstration of faith was to be a public declaration. Paul says in every place men should pray.
Paul calls the men to live lives counter cultural to the community they lived in.
How is prayer counter cultural to the world we live in today?
How important is it that we live out our faith publicly?
Paul is also writing this to deal with the problem of pagan worship that has been brought into the church. The city of Ephesus was home to the temple of Artemis. Artemis was the Greek goddess of the hunt and also fertility. Every year there would be a festival known as the Nativity rite where they would remember the birth of Artemis and engage in all kinds of immorality. The women who worked in this temple would wear all kinds of fancy clothing and would braid their hair like Artemis. There were likely women who were well regarded in the temple of Artemis who expected to have the same authority in the church.
Here is Paul’s address to the women
likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.
The way these women were dressing identified them with the pagan world they had been called out of. In calling them to live counter cultural, Paul calls them to live and dress in modesty, self-control, and doing that by dressing themselves in good works.
What would it look like for us to dress ourselves with modesty, self-control, and good works?
Paul’s main focus in all of this is to address the heart. If Christ has changed your life, why would you dress yourself to identify with the pagan world you’ve been set free from? Think about your heart and your intentions. Does your self expression communicate the grace of God in your life?
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
These women who served in the temple and claimed to be spiritual expected the same level of authority in the church. Paul’s teaching on this, again, is deeply contextual. If we want to understand this we have to read it in the world view of the original audience. Look at God’s character, look at the story of Scripture. God uses women all throughout the Gospels and the book of Acts to proclaim the hope of the Gospel. Paul is writing this not to disqualify women from serving and leading in the church but instead he is addressing a specific problem in the church brought on by cultural biases.
Should people with authority in secular spheres have influence and authority in sacred spaces?
Who gets to lead in the church?
Is all religion the same?
Paul says something really confusing after this.
For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
In a culture that was obsessed with Artemis’ birth and fertility Paul reminds the women of Eve, the mother of all humanity. Paul uses the story of Eve to humble the women who may have been claiming either physically their ability to bear children made them superior, or spiritually their dedication to childbirth made them spiritual authorities. What happened to Eve? The true mother of humanity? She was deceived and became a transgressor.
Yet the hope of the world did come through childbirth!
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”
Through Eve and eventually trough Mary, Jesus was born into the world.
The birth that saves us today isn’t a physical birth but a spiritual birth through the Spirit.
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Regardless of Gender, God is calling us to live counter cultural. The purpose is not to remove Christian influence from the world. This call is not a call to run and hide from the world but to set the example of God’s grace by demonstrating Christ’s identity in us in the world wherever we live, work and play.
We are called to love, serve and pray for our community while living set apart from it.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
