Free Republic

“God Desires All People to Be Saved” (1 Timothy 2:1-15)From time to time the Pew Research Center, an organization that tracks religious trends in America, comes out with a new study. This past week they issued their latest report, called “Modeling the Future of Religion in America: How the U.S Religious Landscape Could Change over the Next 50 Years.” Based on findings from recent decades, they are projecting how things could look in the future if current trends continue. The main question in this study is what percentage of Americans will identify as Christians in the future. Going back to...

“Sound Doctrine: Applying Law and Gospel” (1 Timothy 1:5-17)Sound doctrine: When you hear that phrase, what comes to mind? Maybe you think of a proud, triumphalistic claim: “We in the Missouri Synod have the pure doctrine, not like those other churches!” Maybe you think of sound doctrine as having all your facts in order, in your head, in a sterile, intellectual way, unrelated to real life. Or you think of sound doctrine as unloving, not caring about people, only about guarding the truth. Well, I’m here to tell you that nothing, none of that, could be further from the truth....

“One Mediator” (1 Timothy 2:1-15) Our text this morning is a portion of the Epistle for this day, 1 Timothy 2, reading from verse 3 through verse 7, as follows: “God our Savior . . . desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. . . .” This...

“Sound Doctrine: Law and Gospel” (1 Timothy 1:5-17)Today begins a series of weeks in which the Epistle comes from Paul’s two letters to Timothy. Paul we know, but who is this Timothy? Timothy was Paul’s younger assistant who often traveled with him and whom Paul would sometimes have oversee things in places while Paul was off elsewhere. This is the case when Paul writes this first letter to Timothy. Paul had gone off to Macedonia, and he had Timothy remain in the big city of Ephesus, in western Asia Minor. Ephesus was a very important city for the whole region....

“Pray for Those in Authority: This Is Good and Pleasing” (1 Timothy 2:1-7)Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. In the reading today from 1 Timothy 2, St. Paul urges us to pray for kings and those who are in authority. He says this is good and is pleasing to God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. But what is the connection between the two, between praying for governmental authorities and this being pleasing to God, who wants all people to...

“Godliness with Contentment” (1 Timothy 6:6-19)In our Epistle lesson for today, St. Paul writes to his young assistant, Timothy, and presents him with two different ways to live. One is the way of greed, covetousness, the love of money. The other is the way of godliness, contentment, faith in God. These two ways of life cannot be reconciled; you cannot go in both directions at once. For one, ultimately, is the way of death, while the other is truly the way of life. And so what Paul writes to Timothy, a young pastor in the first century, also applies to...