Sometimes, in my quiet times, I come across a passage of Scripture that causes me to do a double-take. For example, in Paul’s first letter to Timothy, his former disciple, he wrote:
Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers (1 Timothy 4:16).
What’s going on here? Surely Paul didn’t decide late in his life to start teaching that Timothy can be saved by his own righteousness, much less that Timothy’s righteousness can save anybody else. Christ alone is Savior, as Paul himself testifies in a number of other passages of Scripture (Philippians 3:20, 2 Timothy 1:10, Titus 1:4, 2:13, 3:6). That’s basic. What, then, is he saying?
Before anyone can believe in Christ, they have to hear the message (Romans 10:14-15), and I think that’s where Timothy’s faithfulness in his life and in his doctrine come in. By watching them both closely he will be certain to persevere in the faith himself, and he will be a light to those around him. And notice also that his life and his doctrine are together here; people must hear the truth, and they must also see Timothy faithfully living it out.
This twofold charge applies to you and me as well – we have to tell people about Jesus, and we also have to show them Jesus. God has given different gifts to different people, so exactly what this looks like will vary from one believer to another. Over the past few years, my idea of what “ministry” is has expanded greatly, but in whatever form it takes, doctrine and life both need to be present. I think we all recognize what a disaster it would be if I tried to tell people about Jesus when there’s no evidence of him in my life. Equally, the idea I sometimes hear, that I can just live out the gospel and not have to open my mouth to tell people, is also deeply flawed; what good does it do for someone to see me living as a follower of Christ if they never find out anything more about him?
But it’s also flawed because, as I’ve learned, if I decide that I’m not going to tell anyone about Christ, it doesn’t take long before I stop being consistent about showing him to people either. On the other hand, if I’m actually living like following Jesus is the most interesting and exciting thing in my life, I’d have to work to not mention him in my conversations. One of the coolest things about my website Square Holes, in fact, is that when anyone asks me what I do now, I tell them that I run a website about how to live as a follower of Jesus. That has led to some very interesting conversations.
There’s definitely a feedback loop going on here; when I tell people that I’m a follower of Jesus, I find that I’m more strongly motivated to live the way a follower of Jesus should live. And when I’m actually living that way, I find God coming up in my conversations a lot more. My life and my doctrine, to use Paul’s terms, reinforce one another.
There’s no deep theology here. This is an elementary concept, and one that most of you reading this have heard many times before. But I find that it’s good for me to be reminded from time to time of the fundamentals of following Jesus. And now that we’ve been reminded:
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says (James 1:22).