First Timothy Lesson 3

All right, so as I said last week, we got to get done today because I got to teach Philippians next week. So if we have a couple of questions left, I'm sure someone will pick them up for me, but we'll do our best here. So we finished questions one through four last time. We got question four, define the word good. And that's one of those questions that at first it sounds too simple. And then, you know, you start talking about it, you're like, oh, there's a lot more there maybe than what I realized. But was it Bob?

At the end of the last class, he had a question about conscience. And I was like, you know, that's a really good question because we don't really have anything in the question specifically about conscience. Good, of course, is modifying conscience. It's from a good conscience. And so I did do a little bit more homework on conscience, which I thought was, which was, it was worth doing. I definitely don't have time to share everything that I dug up in regards to it.

I think probably just to be really brief, we could say that biblically it's related to the thinking aspect of man or our mind. I said that it's that part of our mind that judges between what is good and evil, what is right and wrong. part of the way that God designed man. So, okay, so the word synodesis, it occurs 30 times in the New Testament. It never occurs in the Gospels interestingly, except one time in the Texas Receptus, the Greek manuscript behind the King James, but it's pretty much just exclusive to the epistles. And it's the mechanism of our mind that evaluates a situation or a circumstance and passes judgment on whether something is right or wrong.

What's interesting is that biblically the conscience does not always evaluate correctly. There's a few verses on that, but it's pretty clear that the conscience can incorrectly evaluate or call what's evil good and what's good evil, right? So you can have an evil conscience. Also, interestingly, we're not necessarily bound to obey our conscience. because we have the concept of being able to kind of violate your conscience or go against conscience. And so there's this interesting kind of conflict potentially between your desires and your conscience. So that's kind of an interesting aspect of conscience as well. Both believers and unbelievers have a conscience. I'm really summarizing. You guys can go if you want my notes, I can give them to you if you want to just go look up the uses of conscience and study this. So that's great, too. But that's fairly clear.

Unbelievers and believers have a conscience. There is a cleansing of the conscience. That's kind of a phrase that's used, especially Hebrews. Hebrews 9 and 10 talk a fair bit about that aspect. and having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. And that sprinkling, of course, is with the blood of Christ. So there seems to be an aspect for believers of having a cleansed conscience, in the sense that when we're born again, our conscience is cleansed by the blood of Christ.

But there's also I think an ongoing aspect of that. And we see that in Ephesians 5, 26, so that he might sanctify her. And of course, this is talking about Christ sanctifying his church, his bride. And it says, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. Now it doesn't specifically mention their conscience, but it does talk about this purifying, this cleansing.

But then there's also Romans 12 too. that says, and do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So I think there's probably a sense in which we can say that the conscience has been cleansed and is being cleansed.

There are certain things that we came to see with a clear conscience, or in other words, we judged correctly when we came to salvation. And what were the things that we've judged rightly or judged correctly in terms of new birth salvation? And that's namely the fact that our, our works were of zero value or merit before God and that we were at enmity with him and we required someone else, we required a savior. Those are some of the truths that we had to get clear on to be born again. But as we grow as believers, there are other truths that we need to learn to judge rightly.

So hopefully that kind of summarizes a little bit of what it means to have a good conscience Um, as, as a believer, um, we'd say a conscience that is judging rightly or judging correctly, um, the, the truths, um, and. In, in, in language that we understand here, I think, uh, our identification, um, so judging rightly our, our identification with Christ. So, okay, there, I got through the conscience. That was two and a half pages of notes. in five minutes so we can uh let's move into question five because like i said we got to get these done but um these are these are important questions so um question number five says how is the word sincere helpful in explaining how faith is genuine or genuine is which one is the american so so how is the word sincere helpful in explaining how faith is genuine.

The word sincere is the translation of Anupakratas. Anupakratas. Okay, we'll talk about that word a little bit. Does anyone want to make a comment on the question? So each of these words in this, there's these three things out of which, maybe we should refresh our verses here. Hey, where do I have these? I got my Bible open in front of me here.

But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. That's verse 5. We'll talk about 6 and 7 in a bit. So the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.

So those all three are in the genitive. So they're kind of this love flows out of, or comes forth from, or is sourced in those three things. And in each of those three, the heart, the conscience, and faith are modified by an adjective. So here we have a sincere faith. And what does that tell us?

So if you guys don't talk, I'm gonna just fill all the airspace. Hey Miles, I was reading Zodiaty's, um, and I thought this was an interesting way of explaining it. Inexperienced in the art of acting. Interesting. Okay. Inexperienced in the art of acting. Very cool. Okay. Um, There's more to that, but I just thought I'd leave that for a minute because I think it's interesting. Definitely. Okay. I'm glad you brought that up.

So, um, So the word, and you guys are probably familiar with the root word, but the first part there on this word is that alpha, the ah, which in the Greek is a negation, right? So the root word is hypocrite, something like that. Basically the word that we get hypocrite from, right, or hypocrisy. But it was the Greek word for an actor on a stage. Okay, so an anhypocritas like JD was saying is inexperienced in the art of acting. That's kind of interesting. So this hypocrite, this Greek hypocrite is an actor, one who takes the role of someone he is not, right? So the word anhypocrite, Anupakratas refers to something which has a certain, oh, hang on. Sorry, not that. I got the wrong word in here. The word hupakratas is something which has a certain outward appearance, but is not that on the inside. That would be a hypocrite. So in terms of, you know, I could put on a pirate costume, right? And I may look outwardly like a pirate, but I'm not, right? That would be, that would be hypocritical is my example.

But, um, so we, so we might say that an Anupakritas faith and an unhypocritical faith or a genuine faith is faith that is consistent with reality. Now we're going to talk about this more in question six. So we've got to be careful here. Um, notice that I didn't say that this is works that are consistent with quote unquote genuine faith. A lot of times, well, we'll save some of this for question six, but we're, I'm talking about a faith that is consistent with reality, not works that are consistent with faith. Okay.

Um, I think, I think this makes sense if we're reminded of what faith is. So what do we always say that our faith must rest on? What's the, I learned this from Holly Hill. So I got, you guys got a truth of God's word. Yeah. Right. Faith has to rest on facts, right? Faith must rest on facts. If it doesn't have facts to rest on, then faith isn't faith. It's just wishful thinking, right?

And like you said, the word of God gives us the substance of our faith. The word of God gives us the concrete truth that our faith can rest on. And what specific facts does the Christian need to be resting their faith on more and more? So we rest our faith in the fact of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection for us as our substitute, and we were born again, we became Christians. Now, as Christians, as those who are born again, those who are in Christ, what do we need to be resting our faith upon? What facts?

God's word. Yeah, still God's word, right? That hasn't changed. It's still God's word, right? Absolutely. Can you ask the question one more time, Myles? Go for it. Uh, sure. Yeah, um the um So we we put our faith in in god's word about christ's Substitutionary death for us his death in our place and and we were born again. Um What is it that now as believers as those who are born again? What is it that we need to be? um Resting our faith in and and yes Courtney the word of god What? What specific, what specific things?

And Luke Jenkins, Jesus, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You're on to it. It's the law of Moses, right? Thanks JD. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is it the law? Um, no. So, so what is it about? What is it in particular about Jesus that we need to continue to grow in and trust in? I would say his character or his life in us. Perfect. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. His character, his life in us. Yeah. 2 Peter 3, 18, growing the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah, for sure. So it's really all about coming to know him, right? Coming to know who he is as a person and what his life is, right? Can I go back for a second? Because JD had the Zodiatis on, but I think that was originally it meant inexperienced art.

But the follow on is the New Testament. And that's why it sounded like sincere was kind of not hypocrisy or this or that, but in this word, it goes on in Zodias, and the New Testament came to mean one without hypocrisy or pretense, unfeigned, genuine, real, true, sincere. I think the sincere faith, what does it mean? I think one of these definitions is genuine or real. I think this is a positive that it's, you know, by a sincere, genuine faith, not one that is just merely outward or, uh, you know, uh, fake this, this, this word is genuine that, you know, with a sincere, genuine, real faith. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's for sure.

So, um, and, and you're right when we talk about the, uh, Hippocrates, you know, that's the and words are like that, right? That's the etymology of the word. That's the parts of it, the makeup of it, and has its root in the stage, you know, the theater and.

And of course, over time, it came to have this meaning of genuineness or sincerity, you know, like we have the the expression today, well, So-and-so is is not plastic or they are plastic, right? Well, that wouldn't make a lot of sense to Someone outside of our context but it's come to mean someone is genuine or not, right? Are they fake? Are they real? right so, um Same same kind of a same kind of a sense is that word came to have that meaning over time. Um So really here so so kind of I guess what i'm i'm getting at.

Um, uh in terms of uh, how how this word is helpful in understanding um, the kind of faith that we were supposed to have. Um, and, and, um, I think that was Ingrid who said that about coming to know him. Um, I can't always tell exactly who's talking in the room, but I recognize some of your voices a little bit, but, um, as we, as we come to know him, uh, we come to depend more and more on this spirit to produce his life through us. So as we come to know him, um, but in knowing him, we have to recognize, um, that we've been, we've been joined to him.

We are in permanent union with Jesus Christ, God's son. That's what it means to be in Christ Jesus. And as the Lord reveals that to us, as we grow and as we learn, we come to depend on him to produce that life, to produce his fruit. So what I said here is a genuine faith or a faith without hypocrisy faith, genuine faith is simply a faith that is consistent with the truth about our life union with Jesus Christ, okay? So, and for us as Christians, God's word has a lot to say about what is true of you in Christ, particularly at a fundamental level, the fact that you are joined to him and that you share in his death and his resurrection. Going back to JD's desire to be under law, you're dead. You're dead. You're dead to law because you because you've participated in in Christ's death to to the law. Right. So.

So if your faith is resting on those true facts, then your faith is genuine or unfaithful, we could say. Um, it's consistent with reality, right? Um, I, I could choose to believe that I'm a pirate and I could dress up like a pirate, but I, it wouldn't make me a pirate. Right. Um, as a Christian who's been born again, um, I, I can trust the facts, the facts, of who I am in Christ Jesus and who he is in me, right? That would be a true and genuine faith because it is real. Um, even if it doesn't look so outwardly always, um, the, the reality is, um, is what the word of God says about who I am as, as a believer in Christ.

So let's, let's look at question number six, cause we're going to deal with this a little bit more and get a little bit more into the, um, some of the, uh, some important distinctions here. Um, contrast genuine faith with pretend faith. Okay. Now Paul doesn't use the expression pretend faith here, but we just want to think about that and get some, some clarity on that. But we have to be really careful with a question like this. This is a good question to open up some, some conversation, but, um, the the uh reformed theology folks love to talk about things like false faith temporal faith spurious faith and and on and on they go and and what they mean by that is typically along the lines that that though a person may claim to have faith if their works don't measure up, then they must not really have faith. They must have false faith is the way they like to kind of talk about that.

And what that leads to is an attempt to produce the fruit of the spirit in our own strength. Okay. So uh, which would include love, which is our, our topic here. But, um, but that automatically gets us going down the path of, of having assurance of salvation or wanting to have assurance of salvation based on, on our own works, on our, on our good works. And, and we know that the biblically salvation is never conditioned on our good works ever. Right. Assurance of salvation is never based on our good works.

In fact, we'll never have assurance if we're looking at our works to find it, okay? And if we don't have assurance, we will never even begin to grow spiritually. I've been there, you know, looking for assurance in what I do, and you won't find it, you won't have it because you'll never be good enough. You'll never know if you've done enough good works or few enough bad works and so on and so forth.

So we want to stay away from the false doctrine of the idea that if a believer isn't living in a certain way that while they don't have Genuine faith or or or saving faith. Well faith Has nothing to do with our with our works, right? Faith is resting our our uh confidence in in someone else's work right, so So when we talk about this question, we we want to um, make that very clear.

That's that's not what we're talking about But in question five we talked about you know this this Anupakritas faith. We talked about what that is. And we said that as a Christian, our faith must rest in the reality of our union with Christ as our very life. That faith is real, sincere, genuine faith because it's resting on the truth. Okay.

So the opposite of sincere faith is not so much fake faith, but it's putting our faith in the wrong thing, or putting our faith in the wrong object. So any attempt to produce the life of Christ apart from dependence on the fact that we are united to Christ and that He is our life, any attempt to produce good works out of our self-effort is putting our faith in ourselves, putting our faith in our own ability, in our own righteousness, which is filthy rags. That's where we're putting our faith. So a false faith, or whatever term we want to put on it, or the opposite of a genuine faith, or I guess this question says pretend faith, if we're going to talk about a category like that, is not so much the lack of good works, but it's putting your faith in something like your own good works.

Does that make sense? We can talk about that a bit. I think it makes a lot of sense. I also think sometimes it reflects a shallow knowledge of God's word and a shallow relationship with him that, at least for me, I think a genuine faith takes a lot of work, takes a lot of depth, takes a lot of turning over your life and walking some hard paths. I think that sometimes I think people feel as though they have a real deep faith and get rocked pretty quickly. Easily, I know i've had plenty of time. So and that has happened to me but um to me it seems That it's pretty easy to go back to works if you have a shallow knowledge or understanding of god's word Yeah Yeah, I think it's always easy to go back to works we're so um We're just so geared for it in our inner flesh, right? That's just our natural bent. So Yeah um Yeah, I mean, putting on outward works is kind of like a mask, right?

You know, attempting to mimic the life of Christ. I can't remember if that was in One of the Hungry Hearts or where that was a little while ago here. Um, you know, we can, we can turn even that the life of Christ into law. If we, if we try, you know, we can look at, you know, what did Jesus do now? I'm going to try to copy that.

Well, you can't, I mean, you can, you can put on some outward things, um, to some degree and, um, but, but you're not resting your faith in, in who he is and the fact that he is, he is your life. He is the, he is the one, he is the person who enlifes you. He is the one who lives through you. Um, and, uh, so.

I think what's interesting is that the reformed folks, they really love to measure whether a person has faith based on their works. But the works are simply what is outwardly visible. And those outward works can be just like a mask, right? There may be a lot of good works visible on the outside where men can see But that's that's no guarantee that that there is is faith inwardly where where god sees it now I I don't I don't mean that um that uh, a person's not a believer necessarily because because there aren't overworks, but what i'm what i'm trying to say you're trying to make clear here is that um that people in their own effort can put on all kinds of outward works and maybe doing that completely out of self-effort and not independence on the Lord. But as we depend on the Lord and the life of Christ in us, He is the one who produces His very life through us. So...

Galatians 2.20. Yeah, yeah, that's right. That's exactly what it is.

I live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God. He loved me and gave himself for me. I've been crucified. It's no longer I live, but Christ lives in me. Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of this comes down. I think growth and That comes down to really, and personally, from the knowledge of the identification truths that we have been co-crucified and we've been placed into Christ. And that takes a lot of the stress off the work aspect when you know it's His life. And like I said to Galatians, it's no longer I live, but Christ lives in me. and it's not my self-efforts that do anything now. It's really, you know, to know Christ is eternal life. To know Him is the key, and as you do that, you're conformed to the image of Him, all of the things that He says in His word. So I think that's where the genuine faith and all that comes from is realizing you've been placed into Christ, and it's no longer I. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

That's where our faith has to rest, is in the facts that we know biblically are true. I guess it gets to be such a hot topic amongst so many believers as soon as we get talking about, well, will a genuine faith produce works? And we do see here that this love that's to be produced, you know, does flow out of genuine faith. But that faith is like you said, Courtney, in the fact that I have died, it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And and so but because people are always looking for the works rather than looking to Christ and for his life, We end up getting very, very involved in inspecting the fruit, which we're terrible at doing. So many reformed people are like, wow, I can evaluate the fruit. No, you can't.

It's like the Pharisees in Jesus' day. They had all kinds of outward things. Everyone thought they were great. They're doing all the good outward things. And everybody was wrong. All of that was produced out of self-effort and fleshly ability. And there was no faith involved at all. So when we get looking at works to evaluate whether faith is genuine, we're completely off track. So will there be a... Yeah, go ahead.

I was just saying, it kind of goes back to one of my isms or something. When you point at somebody and pointing about their lack of faith, there are three fingers pointing back at yourself. Yeah. You know, when we try and judge a genuine faith on somebody else, it's, you know, three of them are pointing back at me. So, you know, it's more focused on your relationship with Christ, and that's the important part, you know. Although, you know, here, you know, the counsel by Paul is to Timothy is to, you know, look for, or you know, to be a sincere and genuine faith. He's telling, but I think that's an outcome of all the other stuff he's already talked about. Yeah, no, it's good. Okay. Well, I just, I wanted to spend a fair bit of time on those two questions because it can get very, um, very confusing with all of the theological stuff.

And frankly, it's just what's natural to our sin nature, our flesh. that whenever we start to hear about, you know, genuine faith, faith that produces good works, it's so easy to run off into saying, well, then, you know, I better get producing some works and prove that I have genuine faith.

Well, no, I mean, yes, you know, faith in the fact of our union with Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection, that does produce, fruit does flow out of that, but we don't evaluate that and we don't, in terms of um uh the the fruit that's not it's not really our our job anyway um you know i mean so anyway there's there's uh let's let's let's try to touch on these last questions here they deal with the the first Six questions dealt with verse five, and now we've got six and seven that say, for some men straying from these things have turned aside to fruitless discussion, wanting to be teachers of the law, even though they do not understand either what they are saying or the matters about which they make confident assertions. So question seven, Says this, verse six describes how teachers have gone off the rails.

What do straying and fruitless help us to understand? I think we could look at 1 Timothy 6, 20 and 21. So at the end of the book, or the letter, Paul says, oh, Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you avoiding worldly uh and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called knowledge which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith so um so paul is talking about this right at the beginning and he comes back to it right at the end tells you it's kind of thematic to what he wants to communicate to timothy um and the idea of going astray um in that verse is from the the content of christian doctrine going astray from the faith. So here, what do straying and fruitless help us to understand? Well, straying is departing from the biblical truth, departing from scripture.

And then fruitless is Is let's see fruitless or fruitless discussion is actually one word fruitless discussion. Um It's it's matai alagai, um, which which basically means a word with no purpose Um, or or purposeless purposeless words purposeless talk right useless talk. Um, so So there's this useless fruitless unproductive um debate or discussion um and uh and kind of tying this into what we're talking about um it's not producing the uh it's not producing what god desires to to produce in us as as christians not producing um the fruit of the spirit okay so um legalists can produce a lot of external works um uh and and they can have everyone fooled even themselves Um, but you cannot produce the fruit of the spirit unless it's produced by the spirit, right? So, so that's why it's fruitless. But what, what are these fruitless, uh, discussions?

What are they straight into? So let's look at question number eight. When a teacher strays from teaching grace, there's only one place where he can go. Where is it? And then I added the question, why? So, When a teacher strays from teaching grace, where is, uh, there's only one place where you can go, you know, what is that place?

Works. Works. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, Law. Law. Yep. Works of law. Yeah. Um, even if it's, even if it's not the mosaic law, right. Um, any principle of law. So. Those being without the law became a law to themselves, right? And that's the in Romans 2. There are only two possible operating systems, right? If you look at Romans 7 verse 4, so yeah, there's only, there are only two possible options, right? And that answers the question of why, you know, what are they straying into? What's the place that they're going? apart from grace and it's law and it's works because those are the only two. Those are the only two operating systems that are available, so to speak.

And Romans 7 verse 4 says, therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead in order that we might bear fruit for God. It's a very good verse for tying in here because because it deals with the fact that we are dead to the system of law. We are dead to operating on the basis of works under law so that we might be joined to Christ. We had to die to that. We had to die to the entire principle of law so that we could be joined to Christ.

There were legal issues at play, so to speak, because right here in the context, Paul is talking about you know, the necessity of the former husband dying so that the woman could be remarried. And that's what he said. Then he turns around and says, you died to the law so that you could be joined to another.

And what's the result or what's the intended result of that in order that we might bear fruit to God? Okay, so this is the vine and the branches this is, you know, as we abide in Christ, his life is produced through us. As we as we depend on him for that as we trust the fact that we've been separated from law, and we've been separated from a system of dead works, and that we are joined to Christ and that. and that he desires to produce his life, his nature and character through us, then he does the living, right? That's that genuine faith at work. Okay, we are like, let's just do, what are we on? Let's talk about question nine.

What don't these teachers understand? I think we can answer that question if we look at verse eight, and if you've kind of read ahead, you'll notice this, but we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, recognizing the fact that law is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, and so on and so forth. Essentially, I think what we could say, what don't these teachers understand? They don't understand the purpose of the law. That's basically the problem with everyone who wants to teach law to the Christian. They don't understand what the law was intended to do.

The law was intended to show us our need. The law was intended to show us our failure. where law increases, sin increases, right? The law came in so that sin would increase and show us the absolute massiveness and, that's the word I'm looking for, just the impossibility of ever producing a righteousness equal with God's righteousness out of our flesh, out of self, right? That's what the purpose of the law is. And so these teachers who were turning to law in an attempt to teach it and put people under it didn't understand what law was all about. and didn't understand what grace was all about either.

And it's just, like we said, it's a very natural tendency of the flesh to gravitate towards work and law. I mean, it was in William Newell, in his Romans commentary, he said, you know, that sin is fundamentally self-will. That's kind of a helpful concept to keep in mind. Sin is fundamentally self-will. And that's exactly what we'll always gravitate back to. As soon as we get off of grace, we gravitate back to self-will and producing works out of my own ability.

So, well, guys, we did it. We made it to the end. So let's close in prayer there. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. Um, we thank you for, um, just the, the wonderful, uh, truth of, uh, what you have, uh, accomplished, uh, in Christ, not only as our substitute, but as our representative so that we, uh, we have become participants, uh, in his death and his resurrection life. Uh, Lord, we pray that we would, uh, learn to. to trust in the reality of those facts that our faith would rest in what is real. And that by that you would produce your life, your character, your fruit through us for your glory. Let me just pray these things in Jesus name, amen.