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Posted on 08/04/2021 5:07:43 AM PDT by metmom
It was to the Philippian Christians that Paul first introduced this truth, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5, NKJV).
Paul wrote this message to them while he was imprisoned in Rome, declaring that he had the mind of Christ and casting aside his reputation to become a servant of Jesus and his church. Then he wrote, “I trust in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you shortly, that I also may be encouraged when I know your state” (Philippians 2:19).
This is the thinking, the outworking, of the mind of Christ. Here was a pastor, sitting in jail, yet he wasn’t thinking of his own hard situation. He was concerned only about the spiritual and physical condition of his people, and he told his sheep, “My comfort will come only when I know you’re doing well in spirit and body. As a result, I’m sending Timothy to check up on you.”
Then Paul makes this alarming statement: “For I have no one like-minded, who will sincerely care for your state” (Philippians 2:20). What a sad statement! As Paul wrote this, the church around him in Rome was growing and being blessed. Clearly, there were godly leaders in the Roman church, but Paul says, “I have no man who shares with me the mind of Christ.” Why was this so?
Evidently, there was no leader in Rome with a servant’s heart, no one who had cast aside reputation and become a living sacrifice. None had the mind of Christ. Instead, everyone was set on pursuing his own interests. “For all seek their own, not the things which are of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:21). Paul’s words here cannot be softened: “Everybody’s out for himself. These ministers seek only to benefit themselves. That’s why there’s nobody here I can trust to naturally care for your needs and hurts, except Timothy.” Paul could trust no one to go to Philippi to be a true servant to that body of believers.
Dear believers, let us be a Timothy to our church and community! Our prayer should be “Lord, I don’t want to be focused only on myself in a world that’s spinning out of control. I don’t want to be concerned only about my own future. I know you hold my path in your hands. Please, Lord, give me your mind. I want to have your servant’s heart.” Once we have become servants to the church, only then will we truly have the mind of Christ.
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In the era of the selfish snowflake, there are very few Timothys. There are few Eunices or Loises. Boys and men are not taught the Scriptures. They do learn some way cool vapid and inane Contemporary “Christian” music in church, but that isn’t going to get them even close to Timothy status.
Yep
What is shamefully obvious is that few assemblies are even aware that this is how Jesus trained his primary Apostles, including Paul, to make His Chosen disciples fit to engage in the training of others to full spiritual maturity.
What is clear is that this kind of discipleship is not a system of going to Bible school or seminary and taking classes there, of getting a "degree" but having no idea of what a durable system of one-on-one or one-on-few discipleship is about. What it is not is having people come to church on a Sunday and even midweek, and being preached at for half an hour or so each time, with no system behind the exhorting plan, then the hearers going home and forgetting even what was preached about. Merely enduring some pastor sermonizing is not discipling.
Timothy was made fit for the work by initial upbringing, then accompanying Paul day by day in his goal of planting churches, with Paul continually indoctrinating, even though he suffered beatings to the point of death by other Jews who resoundingly rejecting The Way of heralding Christ's Gospel of salvation.
Paul had the habit of leaving one of his personally- developed disciple-coworkers behind to guide a new church into functional discipling, as he himself went on to another location.(Actually, it was Luke that he left to guide the Philippian assembly in its early days, as found in his writings and in Luke's.)
In our time, a very few effective systems based on Jesus' example with His Twelve. I have been engaged in one and used it to train others. But most men given the position of "pastor" have usually been very jealous of their position, its authority, and its emoluments, and have inherently been opposed to the development of men in the assembly to be as mature spiritually, or even more so than he is. For hundreds of years, churchianity has been opposed to implementing real continual, never-ceasing discipleship as the expected ongoing involvement of everyone professing belief in Christ.
Is this ordained conduct the occupation followed by most church assemblies? Th answer is "No"; and that is the reason why there are so few Timothies. Even JMac has no such plan for his assembly. He only has the very faulty plan of him being the shepherd" (pastor), and everbody else in the assembly being "sheep." Very frankly, it doesn't yield the product of men and women strong in the abundant life, and able to recruit, induct, and train others the way our military has, the kind of program. The clergy/lay system with its cathedrals and fmcy liturgies and state-supported churches has never produced the abundance of Timothies and Lydias that Jesus and His Father want, never has, and never will.
Actually, our assemblies could learn a lot from the United States Marine Corps as to how to form faithful troops for Christ, who will never go back to the old Christless life.
That is the departure line of being warriors for Christ. The fruit of a true disciple is more disciples. (See John 15, especially John 15:5, 8, and 16). Timothies and Lydias beget more like them, as their children in the Spirit.
P. S. I have known many Marine veterans who are the finest Christian evangelists and men of account in their assemblies, men of repute, reliability, and restraint in their behavior. Many have passed on to Glory. One I had the privilege of discipling for over 10 years, who completed many studies in doctrine and applying the principles in his family, in his work, and in his local independent fundamental immersionist Gospel-preaching assembly; a real Timothy.
True, but which needs to be developed. Notice how the deliverer Moses after protecting his brethren from abuse and flees for his life, responds to this situation:
Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. (Exodus 2:16-17) from the first instance mentioned in which
Next notice the training and heart of Rebekah, though being "very fair to look upon," how she responds to the request for water by the servant of Abraham:
"Let me, I pray thee, drink a little water of thy pitcher". And she said, "Drink, my lord:" and she hasted, and let down her pitcher upon her hand, and gave him drink. And when she had done giving him drink, she said, "I will draw water for thy camels also, until they have done drinking." And she hasted, and emptied her pitcher into the trough, and ran again unto the well to draw water, and drew for all his camels. (Genesis 24:16-20) She said moreover unto him, We have both straw and provender enough, and room to lodge in. And the man bowed down his head, and worshipped the Lord. (Genesis 24:25-26)
Then Jacob:
And it came to pass, when Jacob saw Rachel the daughter of Laban his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother, that Jacob went near, and rolled the stone from the well’s mouth, and watered the flock of Laban his mother’s brother. (Genesis 29:10)
Those with servant's heart need not wait to be told what to do, but look for what they can do, even it is just means picking up a broom and sweeping a floor while waiting. And most importantly, seeing lost souls dishonoring God and heading to Hell, call such to repentance and faith in the risen Lord Jesus, and get in their way to Hell, such as by offering therm a gospel tract.
II Tim. 2:2: “And the things that you have heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit to faithful men, who shall be able to see teach others also.
In Chapter One Paul speaks of “all they which are in Asia are turned away from me.”
But where did they go? They had turned away from the teachings and doctrines that Christ had given directly to Paul for the building of the Body of Christ. They were now embrasing the “religious system and turned into the fables and false doctrines of that false religious system, called “Christendom”.
Without Paul’s message, that is all that is left- a religious system of works, religion. Another gospel. Another Christ.
Now Timothy finds himself on the outside of these “religious apostates.”
Notice though, that Paul never once instructs Timothy anywhere in this epistle to “go in to those in apostasy and see if he could turn them around and back to the faith that was once delivered to the saints, from Christ, to Paul, to the Body of Christ.
Instead of ministering to a “congregation”, “a church”,”an assembly”, or “host parishioners”, Paul tells Timothy to “find faithful men.” SEEK OUT faithful men, individually, to whom he could commit Paul’s message.
By II Timothy the apostasy had begun and a false religion of works, doctrines and traditions of men was taking the place of the Gospel of the Grace of God.
Read Chapter 3. Those were apostates from the truth
They preached another Gospel, another Christ, and works for savation. And they are still doing it today. And yes, they are as old as the Body of Christ. And yes, they are as apostate now as their early leaders were.
It’s like a lot of today’s Christians have gotten a shot of a DEAD religion that will protect them from getting ‘sick’ from a LIVE one.
I may post a lot of Scripture; but am I living it?
Give me a good, ol’ country boy who’s barely literate, but who’s on fire for the Lord - over a Rhodes scholar who is not, any day!
To do so, there are four stages through which a professing believer in Christ's Gospel should progress:
(1) the new-born "babe-in-Christ" (brephos, 1 Peter 2:1-3), newborn babe, able to feed, not to breed);As you know, daniel1212, trying to preach the deep doctrine requiring nature spiritual discernment and digestion of strong meat is not the proper exposure that newly born babes or infants in the Spirit should experience regularly, at least not without warning. They may not or cannot ingest or digest that level of doctrine, and might even be made sick spiritually when forced to accept it without the proper preliminary preparation of graded instruction in various doctrines.
(2) the infant (nepios, Hebrews 5:13), infant, as yet unskillful in the Word of Righteousness, still nursing mainly on milk of the Word, not yet able to ingest and digest strong doctrinal food;
(3) then (paideon, 1 John 2:13,18 in the context) a trainable child who is well aware of the existence of The Father and His Will, accustomed to be trained in and obey instruction of an elder, Luke 2:40;
(4) the young adult (neaniskos, 1 John 2:13,14) who has overcome the Wicked One, of an age (Hebrews 5:14), who by reason of use able to discern both good and evil;
(5) finally one emerges into the last stage, having progressed to the experience of a "father," having known The Father from the beginning of his journey, who in the context has recruited, inducted, and trained disciples into equally full maturity as his own, as ordained in Matthew 28:18-20.
Care must be taken in preaching "strong meat" doctrine to a mixed congregation of both immature infant Christians as well as discerning ones, else some may become confused, offended, or even lost regarding the points being made. This is why and how a program of firmly graded one-on-one or one-on-few discipling should be in place and constantly producing confident assurance in the spiritual growth of the trainees.
Preaching a smattering of various levels of topics by ar plurality of speakers in the absence of any planned path of graded discipling can make church attendance nonsense, unless all of the preaching is limited to the baby, non-progressing level; in which that assembly will probably never fulfill God's plan for it, IMHO.
But thanks do much for your comment on this matter.
You’ve got a good point there; ine to remember when thinking how false cults begin to diverge from orthodox beliefs and practices. Take infant baptism, for one, thinking that saves the baby without any input on its part.
So how does this hot-fire rube gain a full mental library so fully congruent with Bible doctrine that his preaching never leads the hearers astray; that he always fulfills the command that Paul gave to his disciple in 2 Timothy 2:14-15. What makes the Rhodes scholar who sticks to the meaning found in the Byzantine/Majority Greek text less preferable than the enthusiast whose preached interpretation might not be quite right?
Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? (1 Corinthians 14:16) But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. (1 Corinthians 14:24-25)
Thanks for your comment on this matter.
Jesus never used theological arguments with sinners: He just told them to believe and repent.
He saved His scorn and warnings for the ‘educated’ and ‘learned’.
Furthermore, recall that the unsaved person, the soulish "psuchikos" person, the natural man--of whom the great crowds that followed Jesus were consisting--cannot receive the deep things of the Spirit of God, for to them these things are foolish. They cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
You say that you prefer the rube who is "on fire" for God. Now, Peter thought he himself was like that. But he made procedural error after error after error in his lack of biblical knowledge of the Will of the Father and the Will of Jesus. And her kept on doing that even into his ministry, all along trying to cop the role of being the leader of the fellow disciples, and was reprimanded by Jesus for that, and later on by Paul as well for misbehavior.
In comparison, after His resurrection and ascension, Jesus chose the Pharisee of Pharisees, Saul of Tarsus who was slated to be a master of the Sanhedrin, who was persecuting followers of The Way, the apt theological student of Ben Gamaliel, to fill the slot emptied by Judas Iscariot, not somebody essentially roped in by Peter when that was not his job. Without the many books of the Mew Testament outlining the application of Jesus' doctrine to both individuals as well as to church discipline as a whole, where would the guidance of church members be found? It was Paul, who was discipled by Jesus alone in the wastelands of Arabia for three years, then given the ministry of planting churches among the Gentiles, and sent by the other Apostles back to the colony of Tarsus to spend eleven years studying the Greek culture for that purpose.
In fact, it was the "Rhodes scholar" of the day, highly trained as both theologian and familiarized with Gentile culture, whom the Spirit used to put the inspired words of counsel to papyrus through his amanuenses. It is he whose doctrine the Petrine RCC rejects in favor of claiming Simon Peter to be the founder and first Pope (a myth, actually, not proveable) to be their source of apostolic succession, not Paul or John, without whom our New Testament infallible inspired cupboard of doctrinal food would be pretty bare.
Don't you think?
Only in comparison with the other fella I mentioned.
And; if they are the ONLY two types available.
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