I Timothy 2
Dear RTB’ers,
Finally, after nearly four months away Carol and I returned yesterday evening – after one of our longest travel days ever! But that was then, this is now.
I sent a personal note to John, thanking him for stepping into the void that I created, my Sunday-Tuesday absence. Mostly I had kept you appraised of where we would be and I had thought that I would be posting, no problem. But after a Sunday sermon in Bratislava, SK and then traveling to Vienna, AU, my illness denial caught up with me. Then Monday in Vienna, a city that we love, our “last day in Europe” became for me one hour in a Christmas market, then me getting lost going home by myself, then an evening packing for a 6:00 am flight the next day. And somehow I just don’t work well on the plane. So, my apologies for my three-days-gone, but I am back now!
I Timothy!! I Timothy is one of three “pastoral” epistles that Paul wrote – two to Timothy and one to Titus, that have a lot to say about church matters with much less in the way of theological issues. There is a fourth personal letter that Paul wrote, to Philemon on a different personal matter.
…God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (vv. 2:3b-4) I might not have mentioned this verse in a stand-alone chapter 2 comment, but I had expected that I would be posting on both of I Timothy’s first two chapters (until I saw that John had posted), and there is one verse from chapter 1 that stands out: The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners… (1:15a). Both of these verses are from my early born-again days and my involvement with Campus Crusade for Christ, where evangelism, sharing our faith with unbelievers was a primary focus. These two verses were “memory verses” for us that still come to mind the same nearly fifty years later! And what those “Jesus people” were doing in the 1970s is still our charge today, reaching out to unbelievers.
It’s good to be back. See you Sunday…!
Blessings!
See also: November 4 (2021) / I Timothy 2:1-15