LEAVING OUT THE CRUCIAL PARTS
And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth… (2 Timothy 2.24-25)
While I was preparing for ministry in Bible college this passage struck me. Well, parts of it struck me. I read it with lots of editing, as follows:
And the Lord’s servant must…be…able to teach…correcting his opponents…leading to a knowledge of the truth.
I was only 21 and thought the problem with Christianity was that pastors had failed to effectively teach the truth. If I taught the truth and showed everyone where we had gone wrong, people would repent, and churches would be fixed! And if I could teach future pastors in college or grad school, I could multiply my ministry. My plan was to get an education so I would get the truth right and then lead young leaders who could correct the churches.
God didn’t cooperate with my plan. He put obstacles in the way of my dream of higher education and instead made me pulpit supply in a little church that was all but dead.
We are told pastors are given as gifts to the church, but I am convinced that I was placed here for my sake – so God could show me I had left out the really crucial parts of 2 Timothy 2.24-25 – and change me.
Must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone. I missed this, and worse, didn’t realize I had missed it. My responsibility was to be right and insist that others see I was right and persist until they did – for their own good – so I could lead them to a knowledge of the truth.
I never saw myself as being unkind or quarrelsome. I called it “passionate for truth” and “possessing a sense of spiritual urgency”. The truth is the truth. Why would my manner of delivery be important?
Patiently enduring evil. I missed this part too. I had come to teach the truth and deliver others from evil! Their responsibility was to be immediate and complete repentance – not stalling, persisting in their evil ways, or worst of all, question or attack ME for telling them the truth.
That God WANTED me to patiently endure evil while presenting truth was perhaps the hardest lesson I have had to learn.
God may perhaps grant them repentance. I missed every word in this sentence.
God must grant repentance, not me. Repentance is not between me and the listener. When I deliver the message, God must deal with the hearer. There are parts of the heart that only God can reach, and He doesn’t do it according to my expected schedule. Their refusal to respond immediately doesn’t mean that I have failed or that God isn’t working.
God may perhaps grant repentance. There are no guarantees. Hearing and repenting is not a process that works automatically or immediately. God might grant a person repentance today – and He might not. Maybe that soul isn’t ready today. Maybe they will be tomorrow. Or maybe it will take a year – or a decade. That’s not for me to decide.
2 Timothy 2.24-25 looks much different to me today. And thanks to years of God’s gentle and kind instruction and His patient endurance of my ‘evils’, I look much different too.
While I was preparing for ministry in Bible college this passage struck me. Well, parts of it struck me. I read it with lots of editing, as follows:
And the Lord’s servant must…be…able to teach…correcting his opponents…leading to a knowledge of the truth.
I was only 21 and thought the problem with Christianity was that pastors had failed to effectively teach the truth. If I taught the truth and showed everyone where we had gone wrong, people would repent, and churches would be fixed! And if I could teach future pastors in college or grad school, I could multiply my ministry. My plan was to get an education so I would get the truth right and then lead young leaders who could correct the churches.
God didn’t cooperate with my plan. He put obstacles in the way of my dream of higher education and instead made me pulpit supply in a little church that was all but dead.
We are told pastors are given as gifts to the church, but I am convinced that I was placed here for my sake – so God could show me I had left out the really crucial parts of 2 Timothy 2.24-25 – and change me.
Must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone. I missed this, and worse, didn’t realize I had missed it. My responsibility was to be right and insist that others see I was right and persist until they did – for their own good – so I could lead them to a knowledge of the truth.
I never saw myself as being unkind or quarrelsome. I called it “passionate for truth” and “possessing a sense of spiritual urgency”. The truth is the truth. Why would my manner of delivery be important?
Patiently enduring evil. I missed this part too. I had come to teach the truth and deliver others from evil! Their responsibility was to be immediate and complete repentance – not stalling, persisting in their evil ways, or worst of all, question or attack ME for telling them the truth.
That God WANTED me to patiently endure evil while presenting truth was perhaps the hardest lesson I have had to learn.
God may perhaps grant them repentance. I missed every word in this sentence.
God must grant repentance, not me. Repentance is not between me and the listener. When I deliver the message, God must deal with the hearer. There are parts of the heart that only God can reach, and He doesn’t do it according to my expected schedule. Their refusal to respond immediately doesn’t mean that I have failed or that God isn’t working.
God may perhaps grant repentance. There are no guarantees. Hearing and repenting is not a process that works automatically or immediately. God might grant a person repentance today – and He might not. Maybe that soul isn’t ready today. Maybe they will be tomorrow. Or maybe it will take a year – or a decade. That’s not for me to decide.
2 Timothy 2.24-25 looks much different to me today. And thanks to years of God’s gentle and kind instruction and His patient endurance of my ‘evils’, I look much different too.