Did you notice the dynamics of Paul’s instructions to Timothy in our recent Bible lesson?
We discussed this the other day in our Radix Fidem community. For males in particular, as they mature from childhood and into puberty, one of the marks of development is to become a smart-aleck. They look for gotchas and contradictions in what you say, especially if they must deal with your authority. They are looking for any advantage, any leverage, and legalism is all they have.
That’s what Paul referred to as “youthful lusts” in the context of 2 Timothy 2. The biggest problem Timothy faced was the stunting of moral growth that came with those three biggest threat vectors inside the church community.
The ancient Hebrew culture taught a sturdy mysticism that didn’t expect much from this world. It was a tough demand that many men failed to meet. When the Jewish rabbis first encountered Aristotelian logic after Alexander’s conquest, it thrilled their boyish discontent with the world. It appealed to their vanity and they ran with it, twisting that sturdy mysticism into legalism. Everyone kept jockeying for position, trying to prove how smart they were, and that was the character of Judaism.
But those with a pagan background were always trying to drag into the church their pagan assumptions about how deities operated. Their previous experience was a lavish religion with plenty of self-indulgence, while Christian faith was more austere.
And then there were the Gnostics who seemed to combine the worst of the Jews and pagans. The Gentiles were the home ground of Aristotelian logic, and they already suffered quite a bit from that sort of sharp legalistic thinking about words and grammar. They kept stirring up trouble by how they analyzed sacred texts, always trying to find a way to escape responsibilities.
It was the nature of the church community to be rather open to all comers. How would you know that someone wasn’t Elect? You couldn’t, so it meant a lot of folks would hang around who didn’t belong, folks who never quite grasped what the gospel message was about. To them it’s just another religion like they always had, but maybe the people are nicer and the food is free (things that the church encouraged).
Thus, Paul reminded Timothy that the most serious disruptions came from those who couldn’t embrace the mysticism of the gospel. He rattled off a bit of catechism that could not be taken literally, and then noted how something like that could be the starting point for someone to play word games.
If there’s one thing that will destroy our mandate to work on loving each other as Christ loved us, it would be legalistic debates. How many people do you know who are capable of withstanding juvenile verbal sniping? Paul could, and Timothy could, but it’s not easy for everyone who isn’t steeped in the ancient Hebrew mysticism as they were. That mysticism was what they really needed to handle the efforts to derail gospel teaching and growth in the Body.
They needed to spread that biblical mysticism to as many as could absorb it. It was critical to emphasize at every turn.
