Today’s reading: Leviticus 11; 1 Timothy 5
The thing that really sticks out to me in 1 Timothy 5 this morning is not so much the content of the chapter, but the need for real community and relationships that the content implies.
Take Paul’s instructions for widows, for example. He is not expecting Timothy to put a form together that widows in the Ephesian church fill out if they want to apply for financial help from the community, with a committee to review the applications on the first Tuesday of each month. The expectation is that Timothy and/or the other members of the community already know about these women, their families, and their needs, and Paul is just giving instructions in wisely using the church’s funds to help those who are in real need, while instructing and encouraging the community to meet those needs within their own families where possible rather than putting that on the church.
Similarly, with elders, there is an assumption in Paul’s words that the elders are well known to Timothy, as well as to the rest of the church community. Knowing whether someone is worthy of being put in that position in the first place, whether they meet the character and ability requirements Paul already gave Timothy, requires well beyond a surface level understanding of them, but a deep knowledge of who they are, how they conduct themselves, how their families are doing, etc. Then knowing whether there are sin issues in their lives that need addressed as Paul discusses here requires an ongoing intimate knowledge of their lives and their character.
This kind of community was not something they had to be instructed or commanded to pursue, but was just the norm. Among Christians and non-Christians alike, community and relationships were normative, but that’s increasingly not the case today. Between the busyness we continue to pile into our lives and the free and easy availability of every kind of entertainment to fill the few moments of downtime we do have, we have no room or need for real relationships and community anymore. And, unfortunately, the church at large has not stood its ground on this issue but has just gone along with the culture.
But biblical Christianity does not work in the absence of relationships. The church cannot reflect the love of Christ out into the world without depth in our communities. As Jesus Himself said, it is the way we love one another that communicates the reality of our faith to a lost and hurting world in need of His grace and forgiveness.
The church today needs to fight for this. The increasingly phone and media obsessed isolation from one another that has taken over our communities can’t have a place in the church if we want to be able to live out the life and community God has designed and ordained for His people. It wasn’t something Timothy had to fight for in Ephesus, but if we want to experience anywhere near the life and community God desires for us today, it needs to be a fight we wage.
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