1 Timothy 1:12-17, The Third week of Creation Liturgy, September 15, 2019
12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me trustworthy, appointing me to his service. 13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. 17 Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen.
The worst sinner
Besides the Bible and theology, the most exciting story I can tell is tennis. It's been 40 years since it started in 1980. Tennis club members can be divided into two types. While there are members who are steadily improving, there are members whose skills rarely increase. Music, painting, literature, life, all the same, can be developed to the point of death. Because the world is close to infinity. There is pleasure in the process. As the saying goes, "The joy of learning or the joy of reading," there is the joy of tennis, and of course there is the joy of life and of faith. The key to that pleasure is maturity, leap, and development. The maturity, the leap, the development of faith takes place when the world of the Bible is experiencing shockingly. Do you often have that experience in the Bible?
Today's content is part of Paul's letter to Timothy, a fellow and disciple of the faith. As I am reading the content, I've experienced a world where I can't help but call it a surprise, a shock. Paul called himself as “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.”(1 Timothy 1:15b). No one think Paul as the worst sinner. Rather Paul once bragged about himself. In Philippians 3:4-5, Paul says, “ though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee;.” In 1 Corinthian 11:16, He described how he lived as a worker of Christ for a long time.
Paul is not immoral, shameless, unscrupulous, or atheistic. But the reason he described himself as the head of a sinner is because he experienced redemption. Salvation is an absolute life experience. Nothing is intact in the face of absolute life. In front of the sun's light, the brightness of the flashlight doesn't mean. I'll take tennis as an example again. Last time, Nadal of Spain won the U.S. Open tennis tournament. I also like to play tennis in amateur clubs, but in front of Nadal, I am a chief among sinners. If you say you can't play tennis at all, it'll be worth it, but since you think you know how to play it, it's a sin in front of someone who has entered the absolute world of tennis.
Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:15, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Here, sin is not what people think of ethical morality. All our pride and achievements are sinful. People fall into despair as they try to complete their lives with such pride and accomplishment. So it's a sin. People usually hang on to pride and achievement, although there are differences between individuals. People do their best to be recognized by the people around them. You may have experienced it at the Chuseok meeting. The more people cling to pride, achievement, recognition, and praise, the more life shrinks or swells. I was not completely free from pride, achievement and recognition. But I know for certain that it is useless. Those who actually know and believe in Jesus Christ, of course, are free from self-boasting. And that's one of the signs of what happens to the saved. The attitude we need to get out of our pride is to recognize and admit that we are the chief of a sinner.
Eternal King
Paul is not a self-torture or inferior. As I said earlier, he has experienced some absolute world of life. There are two spiritual phenomena in that person. One is to realize how humble he is, as I said before, and the other is God's praise. Paul says he is the chief of a sinner. and then in verse 17, he praises God. These two spiritual phenomena are actually one. Because you can only experience the highest presence at the lowest level. There's no spirituality in the middle. Listen to Paul's hymn. This hymn was called a roll in the church where Paul belonged. The hymn number 11, that we're going to sing a little later today is basically similar to this. If this hymn comes from the center of the soul, this is the man who has experienced the salvation of God.
I read verse 17 again. " Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen."
Here the fundamental attributes of God are described in several words. Anyone who knows this attribute is someone who has experienced God. If you really want to experience God, you have to understand these attributes deeply.
First of all, Paul described God as an eternal king. The term "king" is, of course, a metaphor. At that time, the king was an absolute power to exercise life-or-death authority. But the king of the world dies. It's not forever. When you say that God is the eternal king, it means that only God gives us life. Many Christians hear these words so often that they don't feel shocked. They just accept it and they still try to find the king of the world. They try to find political messiah. They put their neck on a star in the entertainment industry. We expect the kings of the world to guarantee our lives. Paul and other early Christians believed that God alone would guarantee their lives forever.
Think back to the term "eternal" king. Eternal is a concept opposed to finite. The capital, the technology and the politics that govern modern people's lives, no matter how powerful they are, rule us only while we live. Only God, the eternal king, is responsible for our lives beyond our death. Maybe you don't really understand this expression. This is what most people think. "After death, I don't know, and while I'm alive, it's enough to live happily and happily without hard work." That's what I respect. I hope that education, politics and the economy in this country will play this role faithfully. So we fight for political democracy, for economic democracy. Even if it's all right, I'm not satisfied with it. If death completely ends my fate, I might as well die now. Because everything we experience in our lives is vain. There's nothing in vain. All things that have been good for us and all men are not eternal. As having a cup of coffee at a cafe after lunch, our lives end in a moment's. It's also possible to say that it's more precious because it is vain. But I believe that my fate is in God's hands until after death. That is why I praise him as an eternal king. And I do my best to enjoy the life of the God while I live.
How can we know that God is an eternal king who presides over us until after death? Is there any evidence of that? There is no evidence that everyone can agree on. We are the ones who take the Bible as evidence. The Bible testifies everywhere that our fate is not the last thing we think of as death. The culmination of such testimony is the resurrection of Jesus. The Bible and Christian creed say that God raised Jesus from 'the dead'. The dead are the destiny that we are all given. Even though you have a lot of money, you are healthy, you are all "the dead." Jesus disciples and early Christians sang like this, " But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep."(1 Cor. 15:20) Those who believed in him were given a promise of resurrection. It's a belief that you live in seeds, but one day you turn into flowers. Seeds die, but they don't die out completely, they turn into flowers. Some people say that such Bible claims do not have universal support in the world and therefore cannot claim God as an eternal king. If you say that, just let him say so. The truth is not visible to everyone right now. Physical and biological truths aren't the only truth. They're part of the truth. Someday, when the time comes, the truth that the Bible tells will match the truth that physics and biology tell. Until then, we must hold fast to what the Bible says the eternal king means.
The only God!
Verse 17 we read earlier express God as the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. God is immortal. Everything in the world is getting worn and old and dying. Babies are old and decrepit, too. So is the rock, and so is the Earth itself. Early Christians believed that the empire was not destroyed, so if they belonged to the Roman Empire, they were comforted in the face of death. Some people thought so of the family. But all of it is rotten. For God is the source of all that, and he is not corrupt and does not die. God is not going to be in your hands for some. Because they think only what they see is real. We can't see cells and atoms in our eyes right now. But no one can say that there are no cells or atoms. The wind is invisible. But no one says there's no wind. You won't even feel the wind when you indulge in self-pity. We cannot deny that what is invisible is more precious in our lives than what we see. Nevertheless, they reject God unconditionally because he is invisible. That happens when you close your eyes towards the truth.
Here the expression, ‘the only God' is important. This expression is often heard, so you can think of it as a cliche. This expression is shocking enough to shake our entire lives. There is no single organism or thing in the world. Even the rarest creatures and things are the same. Because you can't exist alone. The typical target that exists alone is the sun. So ancient people used to worship the sun as a god. In fact, the sun is just one of many stars. The phrase 'the only' applies only to God. What do you mean? No one in the world can infer God. So Carl Bart said it was impossible to retain the existence of God. It's like a fish in the ocean can't imagine the world outside the water, especially humans. When we meet God, we will not recognize him. Because he's the only one.
The word "the only God" means that everything in the world, including man, is an object, an individual and a part, but God is a total. figuratively, each piece of puzzle that is close to infinity is human and all, and the whole is God. Each piece of the puzzle has a slightly different shape, but is almost identical, and the whole piece is completely distinct from the piece of the puzzle. The whole can be in the shape of Deoksugung Palace or Mount Geumgang. There are several pieces of the puzzle, but the entire Deoksugung Palace and Mount Geumgang shapes are one alone. The puzzle pieces don't know the whole picture. They only recognize that they belong to the whole picture.
It's possible to ask, what is the use of God's fundamental attributes so far in this complex world for us? I'm busy living, I'm tired of taking care of my sick body, and I care about my uncomfortable relationship with my parents-in-law. It's not easy to tolerate loneliness. What does the fact that God is the eternal king have to do with our daily lives? Does God, who is not rotten, invisible, and the only one, give us money or health? Deep knowledge of God does not immediately solve our daily problems. But knowing and experiencing God's fundamental attributes will greatly reduce the problems you think are troublesome in your daily life. To experience God means to accept life on the deepest level. It's like you don't take your child's work seriously when you grow up. So Paul says that in 1 Corinthian 13:11, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." Now, when you grow up, you feel completely new and new about life.
Honor and glory!
The new life comes in the last sentence of today's content. “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen!” Our service today is like this one. Be honor and glory to God! If you change the expression that we are used to, it's called worship and praise. What does this actually mean? It means that we use God's fundamental attributes as the content of our lives. This life does not serve the king of the world that is not eternal, nor does it serve what is to be killed, nor does it absoluteize what is seen, nor does it hang on to something that is partial. On the one hand, no matter how difficult the world is, no matter how well it works, it is not arrogant or overly pleasant. It is not that I am indifferent to the affairs of the world, but that I will enjoy and enjoy the fullness of life in God no matter how things unfold. That is the attitude of life to be honor and glory to God under any circumstances. Would you like a more specific answer? The more specific answer is that anyone who goes into God's fundamental attributes will know it by themselves. Please accept me when I finish my sermon by telling you my daily life.
Someone asked me, "You want to have grandchildren, too, don't you?" And I said, "Well, It's not. I don't want anything else for I am living at the height of my life. And if I have grandchildren later on, that's going to be the another moment of culmination." And so is the political issue. I long for the division of North and South Korea to change into a peace regime as soon as possible and for labor, education, and economic systems to be changed justly. But if our history does not pass, I will not despair; if it does, I will not be overjoyed. Because I am already satisfied with God's grace in all the conditions of life that are given to me today. That's actually true.
“The only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen!”
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