To Encourage You

1 Timothy 5:8 “But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

Have you heard people say regarding the topic of sin, that one sin is just as bad as another?  Have you heard them say something to the effect that in God’s eyes, all sin is the same?  Well, in one sense these statements are correct, in that any sin is the violation of the Law of God and any violation of that Law is the same as any other violation of the Law in the sense that it is disobedience.  The book of James puts it this way: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (James 2:10).  In other words, disobedience to God’s Law is disobedience to God’s Law, no matter how you slice it.  Yet, it’s not that simple, for as we see in the verse above, some things are definitely worse than others. 

Here we are told that the actions (actually the inaction) of believers can be worse than the inaction of unbelievers.  That’s because believers should know better.  For an unbeliever to disobey God is simply to act in a manner that is consistent with that person’s world view.  They don’t know God, and they act like it. It’s not that it’s a good thing, but it’s exactly what one should expect.  However, for a person to profess that they believe in and love God and yet to think, speak, and act like they don’t is inexcusable.  In the verse above we are essentially being told that a believer is not to be lazy. They are to do everything they do with all their might working as to the Lord and not to man (Colossians 3:23-24).  They are to provide for their own families.  Paul put it this way in 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” What a great cure this is for laziness, don’t you think?

But as I thought about the verse from 1 Timothy 5 this morning, a thought occurred to me that hadn’t before. And that is that besides the responsibility that a Christian has to provide physical food for those in his own household, there is an even greater responsibility for Christian parents to feed their family with spiritual food, i.e., the bread of life.  Like Job, the Christian should value the words that come from the mouth of God more than they value their necessary food (Job 23:12).  Furthermore, the Christian has been commanded by God to “teach them (i.e., God’s commandments) diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:7).  Of anyone in our life, it is our family that we should be least likely to neglect when it comes to sharing God’s Word.  To know the life-giving truth of the gospel, to believe it with all our heart, but then to neglect teaching it to the members of our immediate family is a sin that is worse than unbelief.  It’s a sin of omission that a believer should never be guilty of.  It’s a worse thing, obviously, than an unbeliever not feeding his or her family with the bread of life, for they don’t know the truth, but we do. 

May God help us to live out the faith we say we believe, and to be what we say we are.  For as Jesus said in two of His many teaching metaphors, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:13-16).