Saturday 16 June 2007

1 Timothy 5:1-2

Today is the first day of doing my Bible Study as a blog instead of a long page with words. I am starting at 1 Timothy 5:1-2.

1Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.


The New Testament is written for Christians. The major of it is written by Paul to different churches through the Roman Empire. Every book he writes he tells. You could take this passage both ways as other Christians or to everyone. So the only way to find the meaning is to find out what God's Word says about these passages.
The first sentence is about about rebuking older men and treating them as your father. In the sense of rebuking, we would need to rebuke in great patience and careful instruction (2 Timothy 4:2). In the military, I can not go up to an officer and start yelling at him. That would be disrespecting to the officer. Instead, I would go up to him and talk to him as a normal person telling him that he is wrong and this is why. This would honor his authority that he has over me even if he is wrong. The same thing is here. John says, "I write to you, fathers, because you have know him who is from the beginning." Older men have know more about the world. Don't are fathers know more about the life we have on earth than we do? So we need to honor them with what we say. This also falls inline with honor your father and mother commandment that is presented in Exodus and then again in the Gospels. So to exhort older man is honoring him when they are wrong (since no one is perfect).
So what about older women and younger men and women. Paul tells us that we need to treat young men as brother, young women as sisters, and older women as mothers. Older women would have the knowledge to teach us about life just as older men. As young men as brothers is about helping each other out. That means when brother sins rebuke him (Luke 17:3-4). I did not have actually brothers but I had spiritually brothers that I left to so I could go to England. Before I left, we would meet with each other a lot and if one of us would fail to remember scripture, read our Bibles everyday, and/or do our Bible Studies, we would rebuke each other and try to correct what was wrong. This is how spiritual brother would help each other out to get closer in being like Jesus as we are called to do. The last thing that Paul mentioned to Timothy is that he must treat "younger women as sisters". Then he added, "with absolute purity." You can take who we are are to treat with absolute purity in a couple different ways. They are are everyone of just younger women. They are verses to support it both ways. We are called be the holy as God as holy (Leviticus 19:2). If we are holy we will be pure for sin. If we hated our people then we have murder in our hearts (1 John 3:15) and stand to be guilty before God. Now if you go with young women, lust would be the problem and that would mean you committed adultery in your heart which is a sin according to Jesus (Matthew 5:28). So it really does not matter if you take it both ways.
So the main point is that we are to all Christians with the respect. To honor the people and try to keep from sinning by not hating fellow Christians.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thought I would comment and say neat theme, did you make it for yourself? It's really awesome!