Issue 12 - Day 2

1 Timothy 5

1 Timothy 5:21-22
21)  I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things without preferring one before another, doing nothing by partiality.
22)  Lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be partaker of other men's sins: keep thyself pure.

The background here is instruction on the care of widows, the expectation of the behaviour of widows, both young and old, honouring elders, particularly financially supporting those that teach the word, and the process for dealing with error in among the elders. It was a constant problem that the popular people were getting all the help, and others were left wanting.

How often do we show partiality? What is wrong for someone you dislike is fine for a friend. We give more leeway to the popular than to the unpopular. Our favourite teacher/employee/colleague/friend can get away with just about anything, yet there are those we land on like a ton of bricks.

In God’s eyes we are all equal, and his law sees no favourites. His heart is that all should hear his word and come to know him, yet we pick the nice guys to witness to. Thinking back to my school days, when playing football there were always those who were last to be picked (often including me), for quiz teams there were always those never asked to take part. There were those who never got the school prizes, never got to go to the parties and so on. Looking at where people are today (facebook has a lot to answer for) it is those same people who were unpopular at school who seem to now have top jobs, traveling the world, interacting with the glamorous and famous. We weren’t very good at judging people back at school obviously, yet we still do the same today. Ask God to let you see people with his eyes instead.