The Four Fs of the Christian Life

And we're coming to the end of our one Timothy series, the one that we've been in for more than two months now. And as we look at the final chapter of one Timothy, I hope that you have enjoyed our look into what it means to be a gospel empowered Christian. How to live and work within the household of God, as Paul calls it in one Timothy, the church, the buttress and the pillar of the faith, that we can live our God ordained purposes as Christians with one another. Over the last few weeks, we've seen how Paul's opponents in Ephesus were teaching heresy. We saw that they promoted unhealthy speculation.

These enemies of the gospel had a devilish craving, Paul says, for controversy. Greedy for wealth. And all of that ultimately led to them abandoning the Christian faith altogether. But true to his pattern, Paul, following the denunciations that we read last week of the character of these teachers, now moves on from explaining their motives and denouncing those motives, now to focusing on Timothy and what Timothy should do. And we're going to read that this morning from one Timothy 6:11-16.

One Timothy 6:11. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness. Pursue godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus who in His testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession. To keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which He will display at the proper time. He who is the blessed and only sovereign, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who alone has immortality. He who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see, to Him be honour and eternal dominion. Amen.

So far, our reading. As we come to the closing statements of Paul's letter to Timothy, we find him beginning to wrap up his letter and giving Timothy four rapid fire commands. In light of these false teachers, do not be like them and be like this, and there are four commands. And we sum them up this morning under four headings, starting with the letter f. These are four commands that each Christian should know, and I encourage you to write them down, to put them up on your fridge somewhere, and to remember these things, because these four statements are the summaries for the Christian life.

If you ever want practical sermons, here's one. And these four words, four commands are summarised as fleeing, to flee, follow, fight, and fuse. These are imperatives that any Christian will find extremely useful to remember, because they pretty much summarise how to live a God honouring Christian life. Flee, follow, fight and fuse. Firstly, Paul says to Timothy, flee sin.

After having denounced the characteristics of the false teachers in verses 3 to 10, Paul moves on to tell Timothy, flee these very things I've denounced. In other words, flee from the teachings that downplay the centrality of Jesus Christ. Flee from believing any teaching that moves away from the godliness that accords with belief in the gospel. Flee from the delusion that could imagine that godliness is somehow a means to financial gain. Timothy, in light of all of these things, flee from sin.

For some of us, the very idea of running away sounds surprising, especially when we are often called to idolise the strong spiritual warriors who have seemingly withstood incredible pressure. But the Bible is very clear on this. Running away from sin is by far the most effective way of conquering it. For any Christian, the best strategy for living a God honouring life is to avoid at all costs the opportunity to sin in the first place. We have the famous example, don't we, in the Old Testament of Joseph, who was propositioned by the wife of the wealthy Egyptian Potiphar while he was their slave.

She came up to Joseph wanting to sleep with him, and he ran out of that house so quickly that all that Potiphar's wife had in her hand was the cloak that she had grabbed onto him. I've heard stories of pastors who have been propositioned in the same way, and they've known that they may resist one time, they may resist a second time, but probably not a third. The best thing to avoid sin was not to think about it too long, but just to get out of those situations. This doesn't apply just to that particular temptation. It can be a dodgy offer for a quick unethical buck.

Get out of that meeting room. A heated moment of gossip in the lunchroom. Take your sandwich and go and eat outside. A temptation by having your phone or your laptop in your bedroom at night, put those things on charge in the kitchen. If we desire to be men and women of God, there are times where we must show our back to evil and run as fast as our legs will carry us in the opposite direction.

So the best way to combat sin is to flee from the situations where those things can arise. But then after we flee, our first point, our first f, after we flee from temptation and sin, we need to run somewhere else. And so Paul then gives us the second command of living a God honouring Christian life, and that is to, secondly, follow a godly lifestyle. Flee then follow. Where do we run to?

Well, we run to the type of things that Paul mentions in the second half of verse 11, where he writes, pursue, where we get the word follow from, pursue righteousness, godliness, love, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness. The word there, pursue, is literally to hunt down, to follow after, and aren't these type of things described here the things that our heart really wants? Don't we want to be righteous? Don't you want to be more godly? Don't you miss these things and long for them to be evident in every part of your character?

These six virtues relate to both the personal and the public expression of integrity. To be seen in public as a good person, but also to be known in private, to be all of these things righteous, godly, and more. These six things are coupled together, godliness and righteousness together, faith and love together, steadfastness and gentleness, they sort of go hand in hand. But just to quickly explain what some of these words mean, because so often they can just become Christianese that we sort of just gloss over and like, yeah, yeah, okay. To be righteous means that you treat your fellow Christian and the people around you right, in the right way, all the time.

You are godly in your pursuit of living a life that pleases God. In your inner spirit, you are marked by faith and love. Faith probably meaning more the idea of faithfulness, undying loyalty. You are loyal to God, you are loyal to others, you selflessly serve them in love. In gentleness and steadfastness, you never quit.

There is no flakiness with you as a Christian. Your word is your bond. Whatever you say you will do, you do. And then in gentleness, you are tender and you show patient self control even when dealing with people who are difficult. And so we must flee from sin and then follow after this godly lifestyle.

And it seems so basic, doesn't it? It seems so elementary. But the irony is that we often do it the other way around. We turn our back on those virtues and we run to the things that we know are disastrous. Listen to these words and believe me, believe me when I say them to you, this is how you are to live.

This is the order you prioritise what is good in your life and what is useless and pointless, what is bad. This this is the Christian life. John Stott in his commentary puts it this way, we are simply to run from evil as though we are running from danger, and we are to run after goodness as we are running after success. The Christian life is therefore summed up by this dynamic, Stott says. We have to give our mind, our time, our energy to both flight and pursuit.

Flight running away from and pursuing things that are good. This week, I had to go to the physio. I've got a back issue. I'm well and truly heading towards middle age. And the physio said we have to do two things with your back.

Firstly, we have to alleviate and eliminate the pain. Secondly, we have to strengthen your spine through stretching and weight exercises. It's the same here. Eliminate the sin. Eliminate the pain.

Strengthen the godliness. Eliminate and strengthen. Flee and pursue. That is the Christian dynamic. That is the Christian life.

After we then flee sin and follow after godly things, then thirdly, Paul says that we are to fight, and we fight for the truth of the gospel. While we may have needed to take some wise retreats, some strategic retreats in these skirmishes against sin, while we have pursued the bunkers and the trenches of godly virtues, shoring up our godly lifestyle, we now get ready to tango with the enemy through wielding the gospel. Fight the good fight of faith, Paul urges Timothy in verse 12. Notice that it's not just any fight, it's a fight for the faith. What does that mean?

Well, this term faith is referring to the same term called the sound doctrine in chapter one. Timothy is called to protect that sound doctrine in chapter one. It's also the same as the sound teaching mentioned in chapter 4, verse 6, and it is exactly the same as the true deposit referred to very soon in verse 20 of this same chapter, chapter 6. In other words, the faith is the teaching about Jesus Christ, which has been spread by the apostles who were the eyewitnesses of His resurrection, and the world changing message that Jesus Christ saves sinners. This faith is therefore a call to action which every human being is called to enter into through belief and trust in both the person of Jesus Christ and His work on the cross.

This choice to believe in this statement, this belief system, is expressed by the word therefore a summary of clear statements of fact concerning who God is, what Jesus Christ came to do, the state of humanity, the reality of sin and hell, and how we can be saved through faith. Those are clear statements that sum up what this faith is. It's not an ooey gooey spirituality. New age people don't have faith simply because they're spiritual. The faith is true statements about Jesus Christ and what He had to come and do.

And so these basic facts sum up the faith that Timothy is called to fight for. To fight the good fight of faith, therefore, is to both fiercely defend these basic facts and to boldly use it to cut down the forces of evil that are opposing the advancing of God's coming kingdom. It is the message other people need to hear in order to be rescued from hell, to be transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. To fight the good fight is both a defence of the facts and a wielding of the power of that truth. The command to fight, interestingly, in the original Greek is quite expressive.

In chapter one, Timothy is also told to fight the good fight. But Paul there uses a military term for the word to fight. It's really a combat. It's a skirmish. Here, word is closer to athletic effort.

Literally, it means to agonise the good agony. My new wife, Desiree, I say new wife, it sounds like I have an old wife. My one and only wife, who is my recent wife as well. She's a crazy lady. She married me.

Yeah, that's partly the craziness. But the real reason I say she's crazy, Matthew, is that she loves running for no other reason than to run. She's not chasing a ball. She's not running away from snakes or spiders. She runs because she thinks it's fun. Crazy.

And if you listen to her or other crazy people like her, you hear them talk about the pain associated with this long distance running. Something they call exhilarating, which is the point when you think you can't run anymore, your lungs are burning. Your feet feel like lead, and there comes this real rewarding point where you push through that. That is this agony. The agonising of the good agony.

It's becoming clear that our generation will need to learn how to fight for this gospel again. We will need to dig in like long distance runners. Dig deep. Even though every generation has always needed to do that fighting in some way, our cultural moment is quickly showing that the church is needing some serious warriors. The time for fair weather Christians is coming to an end.

The church can no longer make do with Christians floating through life with a thin Christian veneer around a worldly and weak underbelly. To put it to you straight, if the trajectory of the Australian secular society will not change, does not change, only the strongest Christians are going to survive. Only those who will fight, only those who will endure the pain, only those who agonise the good agony will survive. Our generation needs to learn how to contend for this faith. And contending doesn't necessarily mean we need to be contentious.

We don't need to be destructive, but we must both defend and wield the gospel as a sharpened sword that it is. We must withstand and we must cut down false teaching. We must think clearly as we define our theology and sharpen that sword. We need to stand rigid and firm against the compromise over central truths in scripture. And so my prayer is, and may it be ours, that God will raise warriors for His church in Australia.

So that they may agonise the good agony of faith, fighting the good fight for the gospel to unleash all its power against the destructive forces resisting the kingdom. Now as we fight the good fight, fourthly, we are told to fuse to our eternal hope. Timothy is instructed in the second half of verse 12, take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. The word translated as take hold of means to grasp, sometimes with violent urgency. To take hold of in order to make one's own.

This violent urgency is understood when you read the same word used when Jesus took hold of Peter as he was sinking into the water. It's a violent, urgent grasp. Jesus wasn't holding him with His pinky. This was a fierce grasp to save the life of Peter. The same word is used when Paul is taken hold of at the temple in Acts, when He's taken away to be thrown into prison.

He is seized by the crowd, taken hold of with violence. When Paul tells Timothy to take hold of eternal life, He's instructed to grab eternal life for all its worth, to make it his own. Now it's important to point out that Paul's already assumed that Timothy has eternal life. It is confirmed, He says, by his conversion and his public confession of faith, made in front of, He says, many witnesses. Timothy, like all believers therefore, who have made a profession of their faith, Timothy has received eternal life.

Timothy has received this as a present possession, but now He also must remember it is his future hope. Timothy, you are to grab this with all that you have. And that's why I want to use the word fuse, to grab it so tightly that it becomes a part of you. Kent Hughes in his commentary tells the story of a farmer who shot down an eagle one time. And as he inspected the bird, he found a weathered dry skull of a weasel embedded in the neck of this eagle. Evidently, this eagle swooped down to catch this weasel.

The weasel, fighting claw and teeth, grabbed onto this eagle, wedged itself, lodged itself into the throat trying to protect itself, and then had bitten so hard that eventually this weasel, probably eviscerated by that very eagle, his head remained. Impressively, that little weasel showed determination to cling on, to hold on, to fight back. It didn't help him. That's where the analogy fails. But the amazing thing is, it's this fusion, this animal becomes part of this other animal as it clings on.

We are told to hold on to eternal life so tightly that it fuses to the core of our being. So that nothing that you look at now you can see without the perspective of eternity. Nothing you look at now loses an eternal focus. Your choices therefore will be made differently. Your choices about careers and ambitions of your life will be different with an eternal perspective.

The choices you make about who you marry will be different. Take hold of the eternity on offer because it has already entered your soul when you confess Jesus as your Lord and saviour. And so, Paul will say with that vision of what is ahead of us, He says to Timothy and through Timothy to us, flee from sin because those things don't have a hold on you anymore. Follow after a godly lifestyle, because that lifestyle is what you'll have for eternity. Fight for the gospel to remain at the centre of your life, because through that message, you have received eternal life.

And so can anyone else around you. We fuse onto our eternal hope so that it stays with us forever. And then in our last and final point, we find the motivating encouragement why we can do this, and that is because we have the power of God at our side. Paul orders, He charges Timothy to do all this by giving him this absolutely breathtaking command we find in verses 13 to 16. He says, I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and in the presence of Christ who in His testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession as well, that you will keep the commandment unstained and free from reproach until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul calls on two awesome witnesses to watch on as Timothy is to pursue this life. God the Father, God the Son will be looking on. And by calling these witnesses, Paul is encouraging Timothy. He's not intimidating Timothy. He wants Timothy to be encouraged to understand that the giver of all of life is able to give life to you.

He is by your side and not only will you be strengthened by an awareness of Christ's death on the cross, you will be encouraged that He has also been here and He has personally given the good testimony. He has personally given the good confession before Pontius Pilate that He is the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings. This encouraging knowledge that God is watching over us is captured then by the awesome benediction that follows. It's the majestic vision that encourages every Christian, that enables us to flee, to follow, to fight, and to fuse onto our hope. That is found in these final verses.

God, the blessed and only ruler, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the one who is immortal, who lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see, to Him be the honour and the might forever. Amen. How can these good, godly and glorifying lives be lived by us? Because God is sovereign over all powers. He alone is immortal and that means that He is the only being who has ever, always lived.

He is life itself. The God who is never changing, the God who is never ending, everlasting. And therefore, this mighty, everlasting, never changing, holy, glorious God is called to stoop down and witness Paul telling Timothy, you can do this. You must do this. Christians, you must do this.

God our father, our saviour Jesus Christ, glorious, powerful, majestic is telling us this is the life you live. There is no other. Live it. I charge you, man of God, woman of God, flee from sin. Follow godliness.

Fight for the centrality of the gospel, not only out there, but in here. And fuse. Fasten onto your eternal hope before the fatherly gaze of God our father and His son Jesus Christ. Keep this command without spot or blemish until the arrival of the Lord Jesus. And you will find even at the end of your life, the beginning of the rest of your life.

May God give us the strength and may He receive all the glory. Let's pray. Lord God, as we hear these words and if we're, as we are called to examine ourselves to even as we started this morning to profess the name of the God who is holy. Help us firstly to realise that we have been set free into holiness. We have been set free into a life that is free from sin, free from the strife and the chains of it, that we can run away for the first time as slaves that have had their shackles removed, flee from the masters and run into and follow the godly life, the slavery to righteousness that God our father has now enabled us to receive.

Lord, we ask by Your spirit to remind us of these things. Help us to contend and fight for the things that are worth fighting for, to let slip the things that are secondary and irrelevant. Help us, oh God, to fuse and lock onto the hope that lies ahead of us, that is ours already in part now. And help us to have eyes that look on the horizon, so that the things around us may grow strangely dim. We pray this because our God in heaven is powerful.

Our God enables us to live this life because He is the author of that life. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.