2 Timothy 3:10-17

Now you followed my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, persecutions, and sufferings, such as happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium and at Lystra; what persecutions I endured, and out of them all the Lord rescued me! Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
 - 2 Timothy 3:10-17

Paul seems to be putting himself forward as an example of what it is to live a life devoted to Christ and all the things He stood for; teaching, behavior, purpose, faith, patience, love, perseverance, etc. He points out that, as a result of this sort of life, he suffered persecution, but got his strength from the Lord to bring him through all of it. I don't think Paul is trying to say that he lived out Christ to perfection. After all, we read in Romans about how he considered himself the chief of all sinners.

While Paul was not perfect, what we can learn from his life is that he continued to die to himself through all the trials and tribulations, through all the suffering and persecution. He relied completely on Christ's strength to get him through these challenges. He understood that, left to his own strength, he would not be able to survive through these trials. The only way he could survive was to lean on the strength he got from Christ.

Paul assures us that, if we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we, too, will have to deal with such persecution. But this will help to make us better and stronger and, ultimately, more like Christ Himself. This is as opposed to those who refuse to accept Christ who, Paul says, will go "from bad to worse." He says that these people will continue to live out lies and they will surround themselves with people who perpetually lie to them so that everything will be one, big house of cards built on deception.

Rather than doing that, Paul wants to encourage his readers to persevere and rely on what we have learned through him and the other Apostles. He brings up the credibility of the Apostles from whom these teachings have come and points out that these teaching match what we have known all our lives. He encourages the reader to continually refer back to the Scripture for guidance and wisdom so that we don't rely merely on our own flawed wisdom.

This Scripture, as Paul points out, is infallible. It was inspired by God, Himself. The one, true, perfect, loving, powerful, all-knowing God. It is that same God who created everything, therefore He owns and rules over everything. And that God has given us His Word, His Holy Scripture, to guide us. It can be used for all sorts of different purposes such as teaching and training, but also for pointing out when we are mis-behaving and violating what God wants for us. By studying the Bible, we become more wise and we become more and more prepared to handle difficult situations so that we can act in wisdom and in love just as Christ would do. Not that we do this perfectly, but it is a process by which we continue to grow in proportion to how much we study the Bible.

In His wisdom, God inspired the Bible in the format we have today. This is very important to keep in mind. God's book is not like a text book from school. It contains history, poetry, songs, wise sayings, examples of foretelling the future, instructions, and more. This was done so that, the more we study it, the more we understand. God knows that not everyone learns the same way. He also knows that by giving us His Word in these various genres, it will help to give us a more complete understanding. Where one section of scripture causes us to struggle with questions to understand it, another passage helps to clarify and answer those questions.

Any time you are studying your Bible and come across something that doesn't make sense, or even seems downright wrong, it is usually because we are limited in our view and our understanding. Sometimes, it is because we haven't read other parts of scripture that clarify. Other times, very often in fact, it is because we read the scripture as a 21st century person in, for my part, the United States of America. That is not the context in which the scripture was written. We have to get into the minds of the people who originally wrote these inspired words and what their culture and society were like at the time.

Many of the things we may cringe at when we read are because we don’t understand the culture surrounding the author at the time it was written. That can make a big difference in how we understand things such as servitude, marriage, food, international relationsm etc, My recommendation is, when you read something in the Bible that raises your hackles a bit, do some investigation. Find out if this would have been understood the same way to the people whom it was originally written.

The alternative is that we interpret the Bible however it feels most comfortable to us. I won't get into too much detail here, but suffice it to say that if we do that, the logical end to that way of interpretation is that we may as well not bother with having a Bible. We could use any text we like...or no text at all...and just interpret it however we want. There is no ultimate authority, in that case, than our own, personal understanding of how we think things ought to be. To quote many of the celebrities of today, we could have "our own truth." That, to me, seems incompatible with reality.

Until next time, grace, love and peace.