In my previous post on Paul’s first letter to Timothy I talked mainly about the need for love to be the driving force behind our ministry. That’s exactly where Paul’s emphasis lands in his first several sentences to Timothy as well, however, Paul anticipates the same problem that I do when telling someone something like “the aim of our charge is love.” Our conception of what love is and how it plays out towards other people is far from the biblical picture of love. In Paul’s day and in ours being loving towards someone is generally interpreted as doing whatever makes the other person happy. That’s a far cry from real, biblical love.
Love, as Paul points out in 1 Timothy 1:8, includes the law; “Now we know that the law is good”. Just because the aim of our ministry is love doesn’t mean that we do away with the hard truths of God’s law. No, “the law is good.” It’s a useful tool and an essential piece of a loving Gospel community’s life. The problem with the people who in verse 7 are “desiring to be teachers of the law” is not that they want people to know God’s truth and are doing away with friendly, cuddly loving-ness. It’s that they aren’t using the law in the right ways. The law is good “if one uses it lawyfully, understanding this, that the lawy is not laid down for the just but for the lawless”.
Point #1 that Paul makes is that the law is good. Just because we’ve entered into the new covenant and are in Christ doesn’t mean that the Old Testament commands are shuttled off into storage. The law is something that is useful even now, in the new age of Christ’s grace.
Point #2 is that the law is primarily for sinners. He writes, “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners…” and goes on to list a swathe of evil that ranges from homosexuality to murder to disobeying your parents. The law, Paul says, is a tool that is used to bring the lawless to conviction of their sin. As he writes to the church in Rome, “if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin.” (Romans 7:7)
This has huge implications for our life in community together as believers. The law is not a bat used to beat each other into conformity to Christ. It is an x-ray used to reveal the sickness that we wouldn’t see otherwise. Unbelievers need to know the truth of God’s law and judgment in order to see the infinite value of Christ’s love and forgiveness. Even we who are believers , despite the fact that we are primarily “new creations” in Christ, return occasionally to our lawless living when we choose to sin. In those moments we need our friends and family to remind us of God’s law and point us to repentence. Confronting our own sin and idolatry and the sins and idolatries of the culture is a critical part of gospel proclamation. Without it there is no real love present, no matter how nice we may be.
I would be remiss if I didn’t make a side note about some of the particulars of the sins that Paul lists here, given recent events in our state and country. Paul makes a radical statement by placing “the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enlsavers” side by side. In Minnesota homosexual unions are on the way to being legalized, but here Paul places homosexuality and being a slaver on the same level. I know of no one who applauds the selling of another human being into slavery, yet there are tens of thousands who passionately applaud the homosexual community. Scripture leaves no room for the adjustment of what is right and wrong.
God’s law cannot be thrown out from the Christian community. My prayer for the Threshingfloor family and for believers across our country is that we would be people who grasp the balance of what the Apostle Paul is saying to Timothy in these sentences. The aim of our charge is love. The law is good. In a culture where sin is applauded we must be the people of Christ and lovingly, straightforwardly confront the sins around us so that the great surgeon can use blade of his word to sever the chains that hold sinners captive, whether they be the sin of enslaving others, homosexuality, murder, or even disobeying parents. Where grace, love, and law are held in their appropriate balance, freedom is present. We want to be a people who bring the glorious freedom of our King’s reign into the places he has sent us. Let us do so.
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