The letters to Timothy are different from the other letters in the New Testament. Instead of being written to a church in a certain place, they are written to an individual, in the next generation of Christian leadership. It is a time when we are moving beyond the lifespans of those who were the eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ. It is a time when disciples are navigating an ever expanding set of possibilities of faith.
And the world is pushing back on the work of the church. So how do we, as disciples, live in a world of ever more intense pushback not only from outside the church, but from within the wide community called 'the church', with messages that claim the authority of Jesus but have little to no relation to anything Jesus actually taught?
The world described in our passage today is not so different from the world we live in now. Nor is how we ought to reply.
Pastor Pete
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