Preach the Word!

26 August 2025

Do we preach in church? No.

But isn’t that what Paul tells Timothy to do? “Preach the word! Be ready in season and out of season….” No. The word translated “preach” there is kerusso. It means public announcement, not private commentary to an in-group. (Check the lexicon; do the word study in Scripture; expand the word study to the secular literature – all the evidence points the same way, as I’ve argued elsewhere.) It’s not something you do with an in-group in a home; it’s something you do in the marketplace at the top of your lungs for anybody in earshot. That’s just what the word means throughout the literature (notwithstanding our English misappropriation of it).

2 Timothy 4:2 is not an exception to the general usage of kerusso. Absent a compelling contextual reason to read the Sunday meeting into the passage — and it isn’t there — Timothy would have heard the word in its ordinary sense. The only reason we don’t hear it that way is because we’re imposing our usage of “preach” on the passage. Public proclamation was a mainstay of Paul’s ministry, and it’s not exactly a surprise that he charges Timothy to carry on this aspect of his work. The inclusio with “do the work of an evangelist” in v. 5 clinches it, if we needed additional evidence of its public-facing meaning.

Should we thunder the Word from the pulpit? Absolutely. Arguably, that falls under the biblical headings of teaching and prophecy, but in any case there’s not much exegetical case for calling it “preaching.”

But let’s look more closely at the context here. In chapter 1, Paul addresses Timothy’s qualifications and his inner life/personal prerequisites for ministry. He continues that theme in 2:1-13, challenging Timothy to endure hardship for the sake of God’s chosen people. 2:14 forward specifically addresses the way Timothy should minister to those people within the church community, and then (3:1ff) begins to address the hazardous people Timothy will face in that endeavor. Beginning in 3:10, Paul returns his focus to Timothy, contrasting him to the people in 3:1-9 and challenging him to continue in what he’s been taught, knowing that the God-breathed Scriptures themselves will fully equip him.

4:1 begins Paul’s final charge to Timothy, and here he begins with a command that specifically means public announcement and concludes in v.5 with “do the work of an evangelist.” As with his instructions for Timothy’s conduct within the church in 2:14-3:17, Paul leads off with the command (2:14//4:1-2), follows with a warning that it’s likely to be ill-received (3:1-9//4:3-4), and returns to Timothy with “But you…” (3:10ff//4:5). He follows the same pattern of instruction as when he was talking about Timothy’s ministry within the church, but this time, he’s talking about how Timothy faces the world.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Your Preferences are not “Standards”

11 March 2025

I read this post recently, and in the main I agree with it, although I’ve a quibble here and there. It prompted a thought that I want to flesh out here. For the purposes of this post, I’m speaking to young, single Christians who want to get married.

There’s much discussion, even in sensible treatments like Aly Dee’s post above, of the merits and demerits of “lowering your standards.” Conceding the overall discourse of “standards” for a second, the discussion makes sense. You have a wish list of traits you’re looking for, and you want most or all of them in a spouse. That’s what they’re bringing to the table; in market terms, that’s the price you charge for your hand in marriage. Most people are willing to haggle a bit; if your prospect exceeds your expectations in a couple of areas, perhaps you can give some ground in a couple of others. But sometimes, despite your willingness to haggle, you just can’t get the deal done. In market terms, it makes sense to lower the price if the product is just not selling, right?

Of course it does. But you may be looking at the whole interaction through the wrong lens.

Let’s talk about these “standards,” because in my experience, when I ask my young, single friends to give me the list of standards, we too often end up with “loves Jesus,” “wants a family,” “blonde,” and “good calves” all on the same list. They do not belong on the same list. “Blonde” is not a standard, and marrying a brunette is not “lowering your standards.” There simply is no meaningful sense in which blonde hair is a higher standard, and dark hair a lower one. God likes them both.

“But I really like blondes!” you say. No problem. Wherever you’re looking for a spouse, if you have lots of prospects and you only spend Friday evening at home when you absolutely want to, then stick with blondes. Why not date who you prefer? But if the only prospect you have is a brunette, don’t be an idiot. Letting go of a preference is not lowering a standard.

Standards are things God likes. Preferences are things you want. You have no business marrying someone if God isn’t going to like it. You have every reason to consider haggling where your preferences are concerned. True story here: I had my own list, back in my single days. I imagined a woman who was a brunette or redhead, 5’4″, intelligent, a reader, loved the outdoors (among other things). I got three of those five things, and that’s fine. My wife being 5’10” and more of an indoor person does not threaten our marriage in any way.

I was also looking for a woman who loved Jesus, wanted a family, and had a heart for ministry. These things are not in the same category as the other list, and I got all of them. Missing one or more of those things would have fundamentally undermined a godly marriage. Now, as it turns out, we were unable to conceive, and navigating that was one of the more painful things about our life together, but providential suffering doesn’t undermine your marriage. Lack of godly values undermines your marriage.

God likes tall girls and short girls. He likes people with skinny calves and people with muscular calves. He made tons of both. You can learn to like what God likes. You had better not learn to like what God doesn’t.

Nobody is saying you shouldn’t have preferences, and nobody is saying you shouldn’t go for as many of your preferences as you can get. But frankly, if you’re 30 and still single after years of trying, you should be prepared to do a lot of negotiating. So get on your knees, pray, and ask God to give you the wisdom to know what to do, because this is one of the most important judgment calls you’ll ever make.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

A Fuller Fulfillment

11 February 2025

When we talk about “fulfilled prophecy,” what we usually mean is a straightforward prediction along the lines of Micah 5:2, which says that Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Matthew shows how the prophecy was fulfilled. But that’s not the only thing that “fulfilled” can mean.

“Fulfill” has a fuller sense (if you’ll pardon the expression) than just the Micah 5:2 predictive prophecy meaning. In the Hosea 11//Matthew 2 usage, the original sense in Hosea is critical to Matthew’s meaning. Knowing that Israel is God’s son is necessary to understanding the points that Matthew is making: first, that Jesus is Israel (in exactly what sense is a question Matthew will spend the whole book exploring), and second, that the land of Israel has become spiritual Egypt.

Don’t miss that latter point. Matthew invokes “out of Egypt I called My Son” not when Jesus leaves literal Egypt, but when Jesus flees Judea. Judea is the “Egypt” Jesus is fleeing, and Herod is the baby-boy-slaughtering “Pharaoh.” John the Baptist will later reinforce this same point by calling repentant Israelites to come out into the desert to pass through water, a new Exodus forming a new people of God (Jesus joins the new people of God “to fulfill all righteousness”). John the evangelist will much later make the point explicit in Revelation 11:8.

We don’t want to read something into the text that isn’t there, but neither do we want to miss something that is there—and the NT shows us repeatedly that there’s a LOT more there than one might think at first glance. From Jesus Himself proving the resurrection by exegeting a verb tense in Genesis (Matt. 22:32) to the fulfillments of the first few chapters of Matthew to the dizzying displays of Hebrews, the NT shows us a way of reading the OT that we perhaps wouldn’t have come up with on our own, but that’s ok. God is revealing it to us in the way He handles His own revelation.

In conservative circles, we have gotten our hermeneutics from the Book of Nature (mostly as read by E. D. Hirsch), which is very useful as far as it goes. But if that’s all we have, then our hermeneutic will force us to condemn the Holy Spirit’s exegesis of His own work. There has to be something wrong with that picture. What is it? Easy: the Book of Nature isn’t all we have. The Book of Scripture also has something to teach us about how to read.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Pax Christi

25 December 2024

“Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
-the “multitude of the heavenly host” (King James translation)

That word “host” is στρατιά, and it doesn’t mean “choir.” It means “army.” See, “peace on earth” isn’t a feel-good slogan to embroider on pillows. Have you met us? Bringing peace to our world is a serious undertaking. Nobody’s successfully done it yet.

But the Man who will has already been born: Jesus of Nazareth, the construction-worker son of an unwed mother in a town 5 miles from nowhere. Even as a baby, He had a supernatural army at His back. He’s going to need one. His methods are not what we expected; instead of slaying the wicked, He died so that the wicked could live and be transformed. (That’s you and me, in case you were wondering: “the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”)

So eat the fat and drink the sweet; taste and see that the Lord is GOOD! The eternal Son became man that man might partake in the divine nature; nothing less could get the job done. It takes supernatural power to bring peace; join His army on earth. Rebuke, convince, encourage, with all humility. Let the peace of God rule in your heart, that in your peace others may also have peace, and in theirs still others. None of this comes easy; we’re following a Man who was murdered by a coalition of the Respectable People: the mainline liberals (Sadduccees), conservative grassroots (Pharisees), the politically-connected (Herodians), the deep state (Scribes), the Roman civil power — they were all His enemies, and their spiritual descendants will hate you too.

But we keep going. We extend peace everywhere, to everyone, and in the end, there will be fewer stragglers for that angelic army to mop up, and “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as water covers the sea.” Start being part of the peace of Christ today, with your in-laws.

Merry Christmas!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Can We Afford It?

20 November 2024

Treating someone graciously is a form of generosity. As with all forms of generosity, graciousness is greatly cramped when we don’t think we can afford it. This is true whether we can actually afford it or not.

Say we have a single mother in the church who asks one of the men in the church to come look at her tires. It seems to her that something’s wrong, she says. He goes out into the parking lot, and the tire has a great big bulge in the sidewall.

“I don’t get paid until Friday,” she says, “and I have to pay rent out of that. Do you think it can wait until I get paid again in two weeks?”

No, it cannot. Now suppose as they’re talking about how she really shouldn’t delay replacing the tire, another fellow walks over and also takes a look. He agrees with the first guy that the tire should be replaced immediately.

Now suppose that one of these guys has $30,000 in the bank and no pressing need for it, while the other has $700 to his name, and his own rent payment looming at the end of the week. Which one of these guys is going to help this lady pay for tires?

You’d be tempted to say that of course the first guy will do it, but if you’ve been around people a little, you know better than to be so sure. We’ve all known people with tens of thousands of dollars who didn’t think they could afford to part with ten bucks, and we’ve all known people with only a few hundred who would buy you lunch if you looked hungry. Generosity does not depend only on some objective measure of what you can afford. Generosity depends on what you believe you can afford.

The guy with a few hundred bucks to his name, who goes and buys the lady’s tires? He believes that God has been good to him. He believes that God has given him everything he has, and everything he has is therefore at God’s disposal. He believes that God put him here to help take care of the tires, and that God knows the rent is due at the end of the week, and He will take care of it. He knows himself to be living in the lap of God’s largesse; why would he struggle to share? “You can’t outgive God!” he’ll say. Or “I shovel it out, and God shovels it in, and He’s got the bigger shovel.”

I’ve known a bunch of guys like that over the years; had occasion to be one now and again. Let me tell ya: it’s a lot of fun giving God’s money to people who need it! You maybe feel a little dumb come Friday afternoon and you’re still not sure how the rent gets paid, but you know what? I’ve seen God come through over and over and over again. (Standard disclaimer: It’s possible to overdo giving just like it’s possible to overdo anything else. I’m not saying you should just be a moron with your money; I’m saying you should be generally wise, and also know that at any given moment, God might call you to do something that looks really foolish. He gets to do that; everything you have is His. When He does, know that He’s got your back, and He’s good for it.)

To return to the observation I began this post with, it’s not just money. I digressed into money because money is easy to talk about, but you can be generous (or not) with any resource you have. It might be your time, your effort, your expertise. It might be a little space on your web server, or a little space in your garage for someone to store a couple boxes. It might be a late-night run out to the airport to pick up an old friend’s stranded kid, and another run back out there in the morning to get the kid on the next flight out. It might be your sympathy. It might mean showing grace to someone who–this being the meaning of grace–doesn’t deserve a bit of it.

In any of these cases, the key to generosity is the belief that you can afford it, and that, in turn, depends on your gratitude for what God has given you. This is particularly the case with showing sympathy, moral grace.

People who feel a need to signal virtue, people whose virtue is brittle, shallow, only skin-deep, can’t afford to be generous. It would endanger their fragile bona fides. They need to be hard on others, critical, scathing even, lest somebody begin to wonder if they themselves are somehow soft on that particular sin. When you’re about the impossible task of establishing your own righteousness, there’s no audience too small or occasion too petty.

Go thou, and do un-likewise. But this is not something you’re likely to be able to fake, or to muscle through as a raw exercise in self-control. You should be a deep and genuine conduit of God’s grace, and that means you need to become grateful for God’s grace to you. So begin to meditate on God’s grace to you. If you need a place to start, you could do worse than Ephesians 2:1-10. Let’s get about it.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

How to Talk about Marriage and Enemies

1 March 2009

I recently had a conversation with a friend that allowed me to clarify some of my thinking on expressing ourselves biblically and speaking the way God speaks.  I’m grateful to him for the dialogue, and grateful also for his permission to share a portion of our conversation with my readers.  (I actually wrote this particular email, but I quoted him a couple of times, and felt it necessary to discuss the matter with him first since it was a private conversation.) The message has been lightly edited.

Dear [name withheld by request],

Let me start with your statement:

> There are a lot of examples in the Bible that I would not feel free to follow.
> For example, unlike Solomon, I would not describe my wife’s body in picturesque terms
> to anyone besides her, much less in public.  I would be unlikely to write imprecatory
> psalms against my enemies, even if it were permissible.

I would, and have, written and publicly prayed imprecatory prayers, and will again.  As to describing my wife’s body…let me put it this way: Solomon is eminently satisfied with his wife’s body, and he doesn’t care who knows it.  He commands his sons to be satisfied — intoxicated is a better translation — with their wives’ bodies (Prov.5:19) in turn.  I have taken this advice.  I am utterly intoxicated with my wife’s body, and I don’t care who knows it.

I would not go as far as Solomon does, but that is a matter of my lack of talent/maturity as a poet.

If you have a close look at Song of Songs, I think you’ll find that the language, while quite evocative, isn’t explicit in the way we usually mean that word.  Beyond the fact that one is a man and the other is a woman, you’d have a devil of a time trying to draw a portrait of either Solomon or the Shulamite based on the information in the Song — but you know they’re breathless with desire for each other.  You’ll have trouble even telling what’s going on, exactly, at times.  It seems fairly clear where the…um…intimate moments are.  But you’d be hard pressed to draw out more detail than that there is an evocatively described intimate moment.

They know what’s going on, but we don’t.  In other words, it’s the Song of Songs, not the Kama Sutra, nor Playboy, nor a Harlequin romance.  If you come to the Song previously “educated” by those pagan works, then you’ll be disappointed:  “Why does he get so vague just when he’s getting to the good parts?”

I imagine Solomon responding, “I said be satisfied with your wife, not with mine.  What do you want with knowing more about us?  Go and learn each other, and when your lovemaking has the flavor of my Song, then you’re getting somewhere.”

The Song gets us close enough to their love to be warmed by its fire, but not close enough to get burned.

I write poetry off and on, and I can tell you: that’s really, really hard to do.  It’s a lofty goal worthy of a really great Christian poet.

****

You asked:

> Is it your position that anything found in Scripture, anything attributed to or endorsed by
> God, should inform our manner of speech?

I don’t think I’d want to just say yes to this without some elaboration.  “Inform” is the point of difficulty.  If you mean, should we take what God has said into account, then obviously, yes.  If you mean, can we say it, then definitely maybe, depending on what it was, and the circumstances, and who we are.

Yeah, I know — not helpful.  Let me try to clarify.

Proverbs gives a number of guidelines for wise speech.  One of the signal ones is in 26:4-5, which requires answering a fool without getting sucked into his folly, but also answering him in a way that does not permit him to be wise in his own eyes.  If we want a look at what sort of talk does this, there are a few places where wisdom personified talks to a fool, notably 1:22-33 and 8:1-36.  If you’re going to follow the advice that Solomon gives to his sons, i.e., apply 26:4-5, you’re going to have to speak wisely to fools.  On the evidence, that includes some pretty rough language.

Sinking our roots deeper into Proverbs, we find that an important facet of wise speech is ridicule: “As a door turns on its hinges, so turns a lazy man upon his bed.”  It makes sinners look ridiculous — and this is not slanderous, but true, because sin really is that ridiculous.  The thing about this mode of expression is that the lazy fool can’t deny the validity of the comparison — once the image is in his head, he can’t ‘un-see’ it — and he is no longer wise in his own eyes.  This is exactly the point.

Vividness enters in other ways.  If I’m addressing, say, a bunch of high school boys on sexual purity, Proverbs 7:6-27 looks like a good place to go.  The passage is extremely vivid; the movie version would be a very disturbing montage of sex and violence.  It’s meant to be that, and it should be presented vividly — I’m not faithful to the passage if I do any less.  But if I really present that passage as vividly as it deserves, I’m gonna get a bunch of angry phone calls from parents.

The first question to entertain is this: Must we present these passages?
If so, then the second question: Are we free to present them in a way that blunts the force that God put into them?
If we say no, we dare not do that; we must be faithful to the force of the passage, then we’re already most of the way there.  Just presenting things that are clearly applicable today, in ways that are suitably reflective of the force with which the passages are written, will compel some pretty colorful speech.  That sort of speech is therefore not wrong in itself — in fact, it’s required.

Next question: At whom must I aim this speech? In the case of applying Prov.26:4-5, obviously, at the fool.  How do I know who he is?  By studying what Proverbs says about him.

If you undertake a serious study of the characters in Proverbs, what Solomon says about them, and how to interact with them, you will come out carrying a heavy weight of understanding that you must rebuke certain people, and that you must do so colorfully and memorably.  Sarcasm, insults, and invective are among the many tools that are presented for your use within the book.  This is how Wisdom speaks to fools — and above all things, get wisdom.

****

You’ll note I haven’t touched the minor prophets, Jesus, Paul, etc.  We’re getting there shortly.  But first…

****

There are clear NT commands to sing the Psalms, notably Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16, and Jam. 5:13.  There are 150 of them, and we should learn to sing them all.  When we do that, and do it regularly, we will be taught by the Psalms.  We will learn to live with our emotions as God teaches us to do.  We will also find that our prayers change, and the things we are comfortable praying for will change as well.

A Christian that is raised singing the Psalms will not be uncomfortable with imprecatory prayer.  Many Christians are uncomfortable — a further damning evidence that we have utterly failed to be educated by the Psalms as we should.  This discomfort is not an overabundance of sanctification; it’s simple squeamishness.  That David and the Holy Spirit prayed these prayers in the Psalms is proof enough.  If further evidence is desired, note that Paul is no stranger to imprecatory prayer (2 Tim. 4:14), nor are the departed (and therefore perfected and sinless) saints of Rev. 6:9-11.

The excuse — and it is an excuse — arises that all these people are in situations that guarantee the righteousness of what they’re doing: David and Paul are Spirit-inspired, and the departed saints are dead and sinless.  Therefore, so the argument goes, they could do these things, but I cannot, because I could not guarantee the righteousness of it in my case.

But one has to ask, what sort of evidence would satisfy this objection?  If the biblical examples of imprecation were in situations that did not guarantee the righteousness of the practice, then the imprecation would be taken as clear evidence that the speaker was in sin.  When the imprecations are in situations where they have to be righteous, that very guarantee of righteousness becomes an excuse not to emulate the biblical example.  The objection therefore stands revealed: it is not a conviction derived from Scripture, but a simple predjudice, an a priori assumption that flesh-and-blood normal people cannot righteously pray imprecations.

And it’s baloney.  If we are not to emulate righteousness, then what, pray tell, are we to emulate?

It is God’s character to vindicate the righteous and punish the wicked.  One has to wonder how it could be a sin to pray for God to act in accord with His character.

The critical question is, in what context does one pray these prayers?  The answer is largely in the prayers themselves.  A careful study of the imprecatory psalms gives a good sense of the circumstances in which, by biblical example, such prayers are appropriate.  Someone trying to kill you?  Okay.  Common thieves preying upon the innocent?  Sure.  The guy who cut you off in traffic just now?  Not so much.  Sorry.

****

Following Jesus is tricky business.  If somebody is walking around in a robe and sandals, and he says he’s folloiwng Jesus, well…  Jesus wore the clothing of his day.  A follower of Jesus today should wear the clothing of ours.

“So following Jesus means not wearing what Jesus wore?” robe-and-sandal guy will ask.
“Yes” we should say, without embarrassment.  “That’s exactly what it means.”

On the other hand, when Jesus verbally flays the sectarian hypocrites of His day in such colorful terms, He is applying the commands of Proverbs: answering fools according to their folly, lest they be wise in their own eyes.  We ought also to apply the commands of Proverbs, and we could do worse than to do it like Jesus did.

One could describe the ministry of the minor prophets in similar terms.  People wonder how one could justify postmodern life-as-performance-art from the Bible.  Hosea was doing it centuries before Christ — and making a very Solomonic point in so doing.

****

We are ambassadors of Christ to a watching world.  We dare not do any less than faithfully present Scripture.  We must speak about things as God speaks about them.

The alternative is to speak ‘kindly,’ where ‘kind’ is defined not by what God has said and done, but by our sentiment which we have assumed and pasted willy-nilly onto the Scriptures.  “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me, and in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

****

Hope this helps.

His,
Tim

Comments Off on How to Talk about Marriage and Enemies | How To, Meditations, Speaking as God Speaks, Worship | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols