From Darkness to Light
God's Call and Responsibilities
God Calls You into Light
Live in the light of God (Isaiah 2:5) 1 Timothy 6:11-16 New International Version Final Charge to Timothy11 But you, man of God, flee from all this and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, and gentleness.12 Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. 13 In the sight of God, who gives life to everything, and of Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you14 to keep this command without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, 15 which God will bring about in his own time—God, the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, 16 who alone is immortal and who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see. To him be honor and might forever. Amen.
For Reflection
"There is another part of this passage that is striking as well, and that is the twining of the phrase "the good confession," as made first by Jesus Christ, and then by Timothy. "Confession," homologeo, has to do with two things: first, it may be a confession of faith, like the description "I believe in …". Second, this confession is an exhortation to faith, like the prescriptive, "Believe this …" or "Do not doubt but believe" (to coin a phrase). Homologeo occurs just a few times in the New Testament. Here, of course, and tacitly in the description here in 1 Timothy in the story of Jesus before Pilate, and again in Hebrews 3:1, where Jesus is called, "the high priest of our confession." Here in Timothy, that good confessions is, as I have said, first made by Jesus and then echoed by Timothy. In Hebrews, the good confession is both the confession of Jesus the high priest—he is the one who makes it for us—and, at the same time, the confession we, in turn, make about Jesus our high priest. There is both a subjective and an objective sense to our good confession. Most striking is the use of homologeo in 2 Corinthians 9:13, as it parallels 1 Timothy's pairing of the good confession, and the warning about the love of money."*
*The Rev. Dr. Karl Jacobson (M.Div., Luther Seminary; Th.D., Providence) serves as Senior Pastor at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Minneapolis, Minn. Prior to that, he was Assistant Professor of Religion at Augsburg College. https://www.workingpreacher.org/authors/karl-jacobson
PrayPray That you will reject all idols. Pray that your life will be a series of "Good Confessions."
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