Today, we brought in our favorite bible verses to bible class. Here’s mine:

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. ~ 1 Timothy 5:1-2 (NIV)

I wasn’t asked why it was a favorite although I did want to get to say something about it, particularly since a lack of respect and concern for each other and God is one of the most common complaints these days.

I think that verses 1-2 of Paul’s letter to Timothy is really good and if people realized that, they would be changing the world little by little, day-by-day. Treat everyone with the concern you would have for your own family.

Paul does go on to qualify his teachings, some of which just is strange to me and he loses me, though I don’t think it detracts from the way I see the first two verses.

I think Victor Hugo got it in Les Miserables. The Bishop, M. Myriel, doesn’t get Jean Valjean arrested for stealing the silver, despite Madame Magloire’s distress over the theft. Myriel doesn’t think the silver belonged to him in the first place. Its purpose was to help a poor man, and Myriel uses the opporunity to ransom Jean Valjean’s soul. And — the Bishop gives Jean Valjean the silver candlesticks too. He says: “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good.” He treated Jean Valjean as a brother, and it turned Valjean’s life around.

Yeah, I know it doesn’t always work out that way, but I still think when we focus on the times it doesn’t, instead of the times it does, we get lost.

The real purpose of 1 Timothy 5 is to give instruction on how to treat widows and elders. He says: “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” But his purpose in saying so seems to be so less people end up on the needy list. Then he goes on to disqualify sinners outright and try to marry off young widows.

I don’t know if I’m right, but the Bishop’s actions sure seemed a lot more like what Jesus would do and want us to do to me.

Paul goes on in 1 Timothy 6 to give us a lot more advice which has entered into our common vocabulary as these famous expressions:

6:7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.

6:10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

6:12 Fight the good fight of the faith.

It was a nice Palm Sunday service today. Hope yours was too.

Reely