2 Timothy 2:15
"Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." (NKJV)
I love to go to school. That’s not why I became a teacher because being a teacher is very different from being a student. And I love being a student. I love to learn new things; I love to read about different things; I love to write papers. So recently I bought a book at one of the local dollar stores about statistics and research. I’m about a quarter a way through it and already I’m trying to figure out how to apply what I’m learning to the data I collect at school. I’m wondering why this book isn’t being used in all the universities to help prepare graduate students for the research they need to do.
I was musing this thought and continuing to focus on what the book was saying when I heard the Lord speak to me softly, "You do realize, Robin, that you won’t need anything this in heaven." And I began to laugh to myself. All of the kinds of analyzing that researchers do to try to prove this conclusion or that conclusion will be gone once we enter heaven. Why? Because in heaven the Truth is evident! There won’t be any need to prove this or that. The proof will be in the face of the Savior.
But then I realized that there are a lot of things we learn in this life that will be useless in heaven. Lots of facts and theories and even trivia that we fill our minds and lives with everyday won’t even exist once we get to heaven. No one will care if we can compare the original Star Trek with the new. No one will need to know whether or not democracy was a better political system than a monarchy. It will be useless to debate the conventional wisdom of organic versus non-organic foods. All the time we have spent accumulating and debating knowledge will be time uselessly spent.
So, as believers, what do we need to know? Where should our focus be? How can we most efficiently use our time and our lives?
Some might say we need to know how to support ourselves financially, how to make a living. And there is some support of that in scripture. But I think by jumping to that point, we have missed what God really wants to teach us. And I think that 2 Timothy 2:15 is a great starting place.
In 2 Timothy 2:15 we are told a number of things:
• Be diligent (the KJV says "study")
• Present ourselves to God as approved
• Be workers who are not ashamed
• Rightly divide the word of truth
Rightly divide the word of truth
This scripture is, I believe, best understood if we start at the back and work forward. So, what does it mean to "rightly divide the word of truth?" The phrase "word of truth" actually means "doctrine of truth."
Doctrine, I believe, has gotten a bad rap. There are so many Christians who say, "I don’t have (or believe) in doctrine. I just believe in the Bible." But the fact is, every believer has doctrine! There is no way around it. Every believer has a set of beliefs based on what they have read or learned from the Bible.
Doctrine (from Merriam Webster): a principle or position or the body of principles in a branch of knowledge or a system of belief
If you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that is doctrine. If you believe that the Bible should be taken literally, that is doctrine. If you believe in the Trinity, that is doctrine. Whether or not it is articulated in a formal way, every believer has a set of doctrine that they believe. The problem is that very often our doctrine is faulty, based on limited study and a lot of opinion rather than being based on the diligence to rightly divide the word of truth. This is truth even of our pastors and teachers! The doctrine of many churches in America is badly-determined "truth" based on what they read in some book or heard at some conference rather than what they determined based on rightly dividing the word of truth.
So what does "rightly divide" mean? Vine’s says: "The meaning passed from the idea of cutting or ‘dividing,’ to the more general sense of ‘rightly dealing with a thing.’ What is intended here is not ‘dividing’ Scripture from Scripture, but teaching Scripture accurately." (Strong’s G3718). "Rightly dividing the word of truth" then means to teach Scripture accurately using the doctrine of truth! So how do we determine "the truth?"
One of the first problems that we have in America is that we use our opinions or our emotions to determine whether or not something is true. If it "feels" right, then it must be right. For Christianity, nothing could be further from the truth (no pun intended). True Christian belief actually stands in opposition to our emotions which are driven by our sinful nature. So if it feels right, it’s probably wrong! I can’t say that strongly enough. Christianity naturally goes against the grain. Being a Christian is a struggle, even a painful struggle, against the natural-ness of being a human being. As Christians, we were never meant to be happy; we were meant to be holy, set apart to God for His service and His purposes. So when we use our "gut feelings" to determine doctrine, we should always have a check in our spirit and stop to see what scripture really says.
One of the second problems in America is that we trust teachers who have proven themselves to be untrustworthy. I can remember a discussion I had with another believer who was convinced that what a certain Bible teacher said was absolutely right. When I confronted this person with the very unrighteous lifestyle of this Bible teacher, the believer said to me, "Well, what he says is right, so I just ignore what he does." Whoa! Really? The Lord Jesus Himself told us that the way we recognize false teachers was to look at their lives: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits." (Matthew 7:15-16a NKJV). The word translated "fruits" here is karpos, the exact same Greek word used in Galatians 5 for the fruit of the Spirit. Vine’s says: "As the visible expressions of hidden lusts are the works of the flesh, so the invisible power of the Holy Spirit in those who are brought into living union with Christ produces ‘the fruit of the Spirit.’" Many believers have wrongly interpreted this verse to mean the "visible" fruit of a ministry (i.e. the number of followers), but that isn’t the case at all. The Lord Jesus knew that false teachers might have hundreds (or even thousands) of followers which could result in many visible signs of success: books, conferences, television shows, movies, etc. The fruit must be the sign of the Holy Spirit in a teacher’s life, those nine qualities which cannot be faked: "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23).
Why is this important? Because when we listen to false teachers, we learn false doctrine which affects our behavior and choices. We are no longer "rightly" dividing the word of truth because what we have learned has come from a false teacher. And false teachers must, by definition, teach falsely.
Be workers who are not ashamed
There is a great deal of talk these days about Christians in America being persecuted. And there are many sincere Christians who are being pressed into doing things that they say are against their beliefs. That is true! They are being expected to act against what they believe, but (and here is the thing) is what they are being asked to do actually against what the Bible says? Or have their beliefs been skewed by false teachers? Are they actually "workers who are ashamed" because they are failing to live as the Holy Spirit has directed us to live?
I recently read an op-ed on the Huffington Post by the Rev. Dr. Susan K. Smith called "Authentic Christianity a Myth." In her article, she stated:
"The Gospel is pretty much ignored by Christians, an anomaly because it is a truth that since Christians call themselves the same, they ought to embrace and follow Jesus' words. Christians recognize Jesus' birth and death, and celebrate the fact that Jesus ‘died for our sins,’ but they leave the heart of his message strangely alone. . . . It would seem that present-day Christians have reshaped and redefined Christianity to fit their own ideologies and social constructs.
"At the heart of the Christian doctrine is the mandate to love and to obey God. Obeying God comes to Christians through their obedience to the words of Jesus the Christ, who, as Christians profess, is ‘the word made flesh.’ Christian doctrine says that Jesus the Christ is God in the flesh, the incarnation of the spiritual reality called God.
"But it would seem that Christians have pushed Jesus' words aside. Instead of practicing love and forgiveness, too many Christians practice exclusivity and judgment -- in spite of what Jesus says to do. Instead of being a strong force for justice and mercy, the Christian community seems to be in tatters as it attempts to redefine Christianity into something that is comfortable and more easy to do." (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-dr-susan-k-smith/
authentic-christianity-a-_b_8047886.html)
We are becoming "workers who are ashamed" because we are failing to "rightly divide the word of truth." We are becoming a Church that is angry, that is afraid, that is running for its life and hiding in the hills, rather than Christians who trust God so fully that they are willing to be right on the front lines, standing shoulder to shoulder with those in the world who are hurting and lonely and dying.
There are thousands of examples of how we are wrongly interpreting God’s word, but the best example is to look around and see how adversarial we have become with the very world for whom Christ died! Is this how Jesus would have acted? Is that how He did act? No! He befriended sinners and forgave even those who executed Him. He walked willingly to stand in front of His accusers and refused to defend Himself. Why? Because He loved them. But we’re not a very loving Church anymore. And we need to ask ourselves why. We have traded love for righteous indignation, believing that somehow God needs for us to defend Him. What He needs is for us to love the world as Christ loves the world and gave His life for it! We need to learn how to let go of all this that isn’t important in order to put our arms around those souls who are so important to God.
"When Jesus heard that, He said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But go and learn what this means: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice." For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.’" (Matthew 9:12-13 NKJV).
We are called to extend mercy to the sinners around us. What does that mean? "Have mercy" is eleos (Strong’s G1656) and "it assumes need on the part of him who receives it, and resources adequate to meet the need on the part of him who shows it." Do we have resources? Yes, because God will provide whatever we need in order to extend mercy. So what do the sinners around us need? They need love; they need caring; they need someone willing to listen, to invest in their lives without judgment. God will judge them, but He at this time loves them and wants them to be saved. But the only love He can show is through us! Are we truly loving them?
We need to love them in spite of their sinful lifestyles. Now, I know that hundreds (perhaps more) of Christians claim, "We love the sinner, but not the sin," but are our actions loving? Usually they are judgmental and condemning! Jesus ate with sinners. He spent His time listening to them (not judging them), walking with them (not condemning them), and then dying for them (not refusing to acknowledge them). What are we doing with sinners?
Present Ourselves to God as Approved
Dr. Smith quoted the Rev. C. T. Vivian, a central figure in the Civil Rights Movement of the 60s: "We tell God we are Christian whether He likes it or not!"
How do we "present ourselves" to God? We must first come humbly. What does that mean exactly? To be humble is pretty much the opposite of having self-esteem. To be humble is to recognize that God is absolutely and totally in control and in charge. He gets to decide everything! In the vernacular of the school where I work, it’s His playground and He gets to make all the rules. So when we present ourselves to God, we don’t come to Him, telling Him that He needs to approve of us. We come to Him confessing that we are sinners and confessing our sins. Only then will He forgive us and approve us. You see, the fact is, we mess up everyday in every way. There’s no getting around that! We have nothing to be proud of and nothing to commend ourselves.
So how can we present ourselves to God as approved? What is used in this verse is actually an idiom. It’s the picture of silver being put into a hot furnace to prove that it is actually pure silver. When we are presented to God as "approved," what happens is that we are able to withstand the situations of trials and tests.
"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls." (1 Peter 1:6-9 NKJV).
We will be grieved by the trials, but we also need to understand that trials are there to test our faith. We are being purged of those things which are not pleasing to God, which don’t honor Him, so that we can truly be approved by God. In trials we are becoming most like Christ.
Or we are at least supposed to be. But are we? Are we learning from the trials? Are we submitting to His will? Are we learning to trust Him in the darkness? Or are we becoming angry, hardened, self-indulgent? Are we humbling submitting to His will, even when we have to go through pain and heartache? Or we fighting against Him and demanding our own way like little children? Trials should send us to our knees. When trials come, we should pray and pray and pray some more. Prayer isn’t the last thing we should do; it should be the first thing we do in every situation!
We also need to understand what trials are (and what they are not). Trials are not the consequences which we live out because of our sin. Trials don’t come as a result of what we have done (or haven’t done). Trials come because God wants to teach us how to be more like Christ. Unfortunately, often as Christians we bemoan circumstances as trials when the situation is simply because we have sinned!
Discovering the difference between these two (a trial and a consequence of our sin) may be greatest reason that we need to be able to rightly divide the word of truth, so that we can discern the consequences of our sin from the tests of our faith. (1 Peter is wonderful to learning how to do this.)
Be Diligent
Lastly we are to be diligent. The KJV says, "study," but the word has much more meaning. It is spoudazo (Strong’s G4704) and means to "exert oneself, give diligence, be zealous, to labor." It means to apply all of our soul, mind, and strength to the cause of becoming approved of God by rightly dividing the word of truth.
This isn’t something we do only on Sundays or only at Bible study. This should be the focus of the Christian life. Our lives should be permeated with the word of God, but not just reading it to get it to agree with us, but actually allowing it to cut into our very being so that we become more and more like Christ. As we study, we need to ask ourselves, "Am I becoming more loving, more joyful, more kind, more gentle, more self-controlled?" If we rightly divide the Word, the fruit of the Spirit—all of them—should become more and more prominent in our lives. We should become more effacing, more sacrificial, less demanding, less angry. We should become more ashamed of our sin, more grateful for God’s forgiveness, more conscious of the needs of others, more willing to live with less ourselves. We should become more trusting of God regardless of our circumstances and more willing to walk wherever He leads.
The Word should change us into the likeness of our Savior. We are not here to change the world; we are here to be changed by the Holy Spirit so that He can save the world! Salvation brings about a changed heart. A moral culture is useless. A saved heart is everything! Which do I want and where am I going? The answer to that depends on how I divide the Word of Truth. It all comes down to my doctrine, on how I divide God’s Word for my life.
© 2015 Robin L. O’Hare. All rights reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
