Mosaic Church | Winter Garden Audio

Jesus is on mission right now in all of the world through his followers to redeem unredeemed spaces. Because Jesus has asked, invited, and empowered us to join Him, we individually and collectively invest our resources, not in temporary things, but in eternal stories of gospel influence.

We love the Bible’s honesty – the way that Paul admits to the difficult ways that God’s commands often hit us. But he also calls us to consider this even greater mystery: Christ—the exalted-forever Creator, who lowered himself to human form, willingly humbling himself to the point of death. Consider how he came not to be served but to serve. What a glorious mystery indeed! If we truly follow King Jesus, aren’t we called to the same? If we follow him in his humility, can we not also hope to share in his glory? As followers of Christ, we don’t have to guess at what godliness looks like, it has been manifested in Christ himself, for us to see and believe.

After calling out false and destructive leadership, Paul calls up noble and beautiful leadership. Rather than seeking authority, power, and position in the church, leaders who follow the way of Jesus should see leadership as an opportunity to serve others.

Continuing in the context of Paul writing to Timothy to correct false teachers in Ephesus, there is a further need for correction among those influenced by their false teaching. This included both men and women within the church at Ephesus. Both are called to lovingly seek the good of others, in a manner consistent with sound doctrine.

If “the aim of our charge is love” (1 Timothy 1:5), then what does love as followers of Jesus look like? Who are we to love and how are we to love them? What about people who have hurt us? Paul shows us that loving others is to go as far and wide as the love of God, which is for all people. God invites us to lovingly pray for our enemies, for rulers, and for all people, not only to work in their lives, but also in us, that God may shape our hearts to reflect his own.

Previously, we reflected with Paul on the meaning of the gospel; now we pause, and worship God for the beauty of a gospel that never gets old. In 1st Timothy 1:17, Paul pauses in his letter to Timothy, and exalts God in poetic praise. In this we are reminded that the glorious realities of the gospel are not information that we move coldly past. Rather, the gospel is eternal power (Rom. 1:16) that calls for daily remembrance, which fuels worship, no matter our circumstance.

Paul brings further clarity and correction to the false teachers in Ephesus, who had wrongly taught the purpose of the law and our relationship with it. Paul reveals that rather than make us perfect, the law reveals our imperfection, and reveals God as the only righteous one. It is only through Jesus that the law empowers us for healthy, right living rather than bondage. Paul uses his own life as an example of how Jesus is able to save even the “chief of sinners,” while the law would always be unable to do so.